Firstly, thanks for the overwhelming comments and feedback. Genuinely really appreciated. I am pleased 500+ of you find it useful.
If you didn't read the first post you can do so here: risk management part I. You'll need to do so in order to make sense of the topic.
As ever please comment/reply below with questions or feedback and I'll do my best to get back to you.
Part II

Letting stops breathe
When to change a stop
Entering and exiting winning positions
Risk:reward ratios
Risk-adjusted returns

Letting stops breathe

We talked earlier about giving a position enough room to breathe so it is not stopped out in day-to-day noise.
Let’s consider the chart below and imagine you had a trailing stop. It would be super painful to miss out on the wider move just because you left a stop that was too tight.

Imagine being long and stopped out on a meaningless retracement ... ouch!
One simple technique is simply to look at your chosen chart - let’s say daily bars. And then look at previous trends and use the measuring tool. Those generally look something like this and then you just click and drag to measure.
For example if we wanted to bet on a downtrend on the chart above we might look at the biggest retracement on the previous uptrend. That max drawdown was about 100 pips or just under 1%. So you’d want your stop to be able to withstand at least that.
If market conditions have changed - for example if CVIX has risen - and daily ranges are now higher you should incorporate that. If you know a big event is coming up you might think about that, too. The human brain is a remarkable tool and the power of the eye-ball method is not to be dismissed. This is how most discretionary traders do it.
There are also more analytical approaches.
Some look at the Average True Range (ATR). This attempts to capture the volatility of a pair, typically averaged over a number of sessions. It looks at three separate measures and takes the largest reading. Think of this as a moving average of how much a pair moves.
For example, below shows the daily move in EURUSD was around 60 pips before spiking to 140 pips in March. Conditions were clearly far more volatile in March. Accordingly, you would need to leave your stop further away in March and take a correspondingly smaller position size.

ATR is available on pretty much all charting systems
Professional traders tend to use standard deviation as a measure of volatility instead of ATR. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Averages are useful but can be misleading when regimes switch (see above chart).
Once you have chosen a measure of volatility, stop distance can then be back-tested and optimised. For example does 2x ATR work best or 5x ATR for a given style and time horizon?
Discretionary traders may still eye-ball the ATR or standard deviation to get a feeling for how it has changed over time and what ‘normal’ feels like for a chosen study period - daily, weekly, monthly etc.

Reasons to change a stop

As a general rule you should be disciplined and not change your stops. Remember - losers average losers. This is really hard at first and we’re going to look at that in more detail later.
There are some good reasons to modify stops but they are rare.
One reason is if another risk management process demands you stop trading and close positions. We’ll look at this later. In that case just close out your positions at market and take the loss/gains as they are.
Another is event risk. If you have some big upcoming data like Non Farm Payrolls that you know can move the market +/- 150 pips and you have no edge going into the release then many traders will take off or scale down their positions. They’ll go back into the positions when the data is out and the market has quietened down after fifteen minutes or so. This is a matter of some debate - many traders consider it a coin toss and argue you win some and lose some and it all averages out.
Trailing stops can also be used to ‘lock in’ profits. We looked at those before. As the trade moves in your favour (say up if you are long) the stop loss ratchets with it. This means you may well end up ‘stopping out’ at a profit - as per the below example.

The mighty trailing stop loss order
It is perfectly reasonable to have your stop loss move in the direction of PNL. This is not exposing you to more risk than you originally were comfortable with. It is taking less and less risk as the trade moves in your favour. Trend-followers in particular love trailing stops.
One final question traders ask is what they should do if they get stopped out but still like the trade. Should they try the same trade again a day later for the same reasons? Nope. Look for a different trade rather than getting emotionally wed to the original idea.
Let’s say a particular stock looked cheap based on valuation metrics yesterday, you bought, it went down and you got stopped out. Well, it is going to look even better on those same metrics today. Maybe the market just doesn’t respect value at the moment and is driven by momentum. Wait it out.
Otherwise, why even have a stop in the first place?

Entering and exiting winning positions

Take profits are the opposite of stop losses. They are also resting orders, left with the broker, to automatically close your position if it reaches a certain price.
Imagine I’m long EURUSD at 1.1250. If it hits a previous high of 1.1400 (150 pips higher) I will leave a sell order to take profit and close the position.
The rookie mistake on take profits is to take profit too early. One should start from the assumption that you will win on no more than half of your trades. Therefore you will need to ensure that you win more on the ones that work than you lose on those that don’t.

Sad to say but incredibly common: retail traders often take profits way too early
This is going to be the exact opposite of what your emotions want you to do. We are going to look at that in the Psychology of Trading chapter.
Remember: let winners run. Just like stops you need to know in advance the level where you will close out at a profit. Then let the trade happen. Don’t override yourself and let emotions force you to take a small profit. A classic mistake to avoid.
The trader puts on a trade and it almost stops out before rebounding. As soon as it is slightly in the money they spook and cut out, instead of letting it run to their original take profit. Do not do this.

Entering positions with limit orders

That covers exiting a position but how about getting into one?
Take profits can also be left speculatively to enter a position. Sometimes referred to as “bids” (buy orders) or “offers” (sell orders). Imagine the price is 1.1250 and the recent low is 1.1205.
You might wish to leave a bid around 1.2010 to enter a long position, if the market reaches that price. This way you don’t need to sit at the computer and wait.
Again, typically traders will use tech analysis to identify attractive levels. Again - other traders will cluster with your orders. Just like the stop loss we need to bake that in.
So this time if we know everyone is going to buy around the recent low of 1.1205 we might leave the take profit bit a little bit above there at 1.1210 to ensure it gets done. Sure it costs 5 more pips but how mad would you be if the low was 1.1207 and then it rallied a hundred points and you didn’t have the trade on?!
There are two more methods that traders often use for entering a position.
Scaling in is one such technique. Let’s imagine that you think we are in a long-term bulltrend for AUDUSD but experiencing a brief retracement. You want to take a total position of 500,000 AUD and don’t have a strong view on the current price action.
You might therefore leave a series of five bids of 100,000. As the price moves lower each one gets hit. The nice thing about scaling in is it reduces pressure on you to pick the perfect level. Of course the risk is that not all your orders get hit before the price moves higher and you have to trade at-market.
Pyramiding is the second technique. Pyramiding is for take profits what a trailing stop loss is to regular stops. It is especially common for momentum traders.

Pyramiding into a position means buying more as it goes in your favour
Again let’s imagine we’re bullish AUDUSD and want to take a position of 500,000 AUD.
Here we add 100,000 when our first signal is reached. Then we add subsequent clips of 100,000 when the trade moves in our favour. We are waiting for confirmation that the move is correct.
Obviously this is quite nice as we humans love trading when it goes in our direction. However, the drawback is obvious: we haven’t had the full amount of risk on from the start of the trend.
You can see the attractions and drawbacks of both approaches. It is best to experiment and choose techniques that work for your own personal psychology as these will be the easiest for you to stick with and build a disciplined process around.

Risk:reward and win ratios

Be extremely skeptical of people who claim to win on 80% of trades. Most traders will win on roughly 50% of trades and lose on 50% of trades. This is why risk management is so important!
Once you start keeping a trading journal you’ll be able to see how the win/loss ratio looks for you. Until then, assume you’re typical and that every other trade will lose money.
If that is the case then you need to be sure you make more on the wins than you lose on the losses. You can see the effect of this below.

A combination of win % and risk:reward ratio determine if you are profitable
A typical rule of thumb is that a ratio of 1:3 works well for most traders.
That is, if you are prepared to risk 100 pips on your stop you should be setting a take profit at a level that would return you 300 pips.
One needn’t be religious about these numbers - 11 pips and 28 pips would be perfectly fine - but they are a guideline.
Again - you should still use technical analysis to find meaningful chart levels for both the stop and take profit. Don’t just blindly take your stop distance and do 3x the pips on the other side as your take profit. Use the ratio to set approximate targets and then look for a relevant resistance or support level in that kind of region.

Risk-adjusted returns

Not all returns are equal. Suppose you are examining the track record of two traders. Now, both have produced a return of 14% over the year. Not bad!
The first trader, however, made hundreds of small bets throughout the year and his cumulative PNL looked like the left image below.
The second trader made just one bet — he sold CADJPY at the start of the year — and his PNL looked like the right image below with lots of large drawdowns and volatility.
Would you rather have the first trading record or the second?
If you were investing money and betting on who would do well next year which would you choose? Of course all sensible people would choose the first trader. Yet if you look only at returns one cannot distinguish between the two. Both are up 14% at that point in time. This is where the Sharpe ratio helps .
A high Sharpe ratio indicates that a portfolio has better risk-adjusted performance. One cannot sensibly compare returns without considering the risk taken to earn that return.
If I can earn 80% of the return of another investor at only 50% of the risk then a rational investor should simply leverage me at 2x and enjoy 160% of the return at the same level of risk.
This is very important in the context of Execution Advisor algorithms (EAs) that are popular in the retail community. You must evaluate historic performance by its risk-adjusted return — not just the nominal return. Incidentally look at the Sharpe ratio of ones that have been live for a year or more ...
Otherwise an EA developer could produce two EAs: the first simply buys at 1000:1 leverage on January 1st ; and the second sells in the same manner. At the end of the year, one of them will be discarded and the other will look incredible. Its risk-adjusted return, however, would be abysmal and the odds of repeated success are similarly poor.

Sharpe ratio

The Sharpe ratio works like this:

It takes the average returns of your strategy;
It deducts from these the risk-free rate of return i.e. the rate anyone could have got by investing in US government bonds with very little risk;
It then divides this total return by its own volatility - the more smooth the return the higher and better the Sharpe, the more volatile the lower and worse the Sharpe.

For example, say the return last year was 15% with a volatility of 10% and US bonds are trading at 2%. That gives (15-2)/10 or a Sharpe ratio of 1.3. As a rule of thumb a Sharpe ratio of above 0.5 would be considered decent for a discretionary retail trader. Above 1 is excellent.
You don’t really need to know how to calculate Sharpe ratios. Good trading software will do this for you. It will either be available in the system by default or you can add a plug-in.

VAR

VAR is another useful measure to help with drawdowns. It stands for Value at Risk. Normally people will use 99% VAR (conservative) or 95% VAR (aggressive). Let’s say you’re long EURUSD and using 95% VAR. The system will look at the historic movement of EURUSD. It might spit out a number of -1.2%.

A 5% VAR of -1.2% tells you you should expect to lose 1.2% on 5% of days, whilst 95% of days should be better than that
This means it is expected that on 5 days out of 100 (hence the 95%) the portfolio will lose 1.2% or more. This can help you manage your capital by taking appropriately sized positions. Typically you would look at VAR across your portfolio of trades rather than trade by trade.
Sharpe ratios and VAR don’t give you the whole picture, though. Legendary fund manager, Howard Marks of Oaktree, notes that, while tools like VAR and Sharpe ratios are helpful and absolutely necessary, the best investors will also overlay their own judgment.
Investors can calculate risk metrics like VaR and Sharpe ratios (we use them at Oaktree; they’re the best tools we have), but they shouldn’t put too much faith in them. The bottom line for me is that risk management should be the responsibility of every participant in the investment process, applying experience, judgment and knowledge of the underlying investments.Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital
What he’s saying is don’t misplace your common sense. Do use these tools as they are helpful. However, you cannot fully rely on them. Both assume a normal distribution of returns. Whereas in real life you get “black swans” - events that should supposedly happen only once every thousand years but which actually seem to happen fairly often.
These outlier events are often referred to as “tail risk”. Don’t make the mistake of saying “well, the model said…” - overlay what the model is telling you with your own common sense and good judgment.

Coming up in part III

Available here
Squeezes and other risks
Market positioning
Bet correlation
Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits

***
Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.

Real quick before I get into my next steps of my FX Journey, id like to say thank you to all the people who commented on my last post! All of the tips I got were really eye-opening and introduced me to different parts of FX trading that I didn't even know existed. So thank you so much, and I hope to get more interesting feedback from you guys in the future! Also Im going to probably change my writing frequency from daily to biweekly. I think writing about every little trade is not going to be as beneficial to me as writing about my overall progress at certain points throughout the week.
I started this trading day out by learning up on order flow. A whole bunch of you guys suggested really interesting youtubers to watch, and I started with Mr. pip's series on order flow. After I finished up watching a few of his videos, I started to tweak my trading plan so that I could get in some chart time. I changed currency pair from EUUSD to the AUD/USD, the time frame from the 4 hour to the 1 hour, and my indicators from RSI, Stochastic, 2 SMAs and ADX to ATR, RSI, and Ichimoku Kinko Hyo. I also added a little fundamental analysis in my trading plan because I think that I am being far too reliant on my indicators. I planned to check the economic calendar and determine the general trend of the currency pairs that are strongly correlated to the AUD/USD before I began my chart analysis. In addition to all of my analysis, I tried to practice using the techniques I learned in Mr. Pip's videos and analyze the order flow of the chart. Even if my analysis of order flow is wrong, as long as I am getting practice I am learning.
Eventhough I planned to use today to back-test indicators and find a solid new plan, I did not have enough time. I ended up getting on my demo account really late in the day, and started to force myself to enter a trade. Destructive habits like this could lead into some massive issues when I eventually get into live trading. To combat this harmful attitude specifically, I will restrict myself to trading on certain parts of the day (for example session overlaps, news releases, and earlier in the day). Despite this mistake I still continued with my trading strategy. I calculated all the currency correlations for AUS/USD using the past weeks economic data, and set my indicators in place. After checking the overall trend of the most strongly correlated pairs (Positive: EUUSD, GPB/USD, Negative: USD/CAD, USD/JPY) I started to analyze the order flow. All the correlated currencies, except for EUUSD, indicated that the AUD/USD would fall, while my order flow analysis indicated the opposite. Seeing as though I am extremely new to order flow, I dismissed this analysis, and ended up forcing a trade on the AUD/USD going short when my indicators seemed to line up correctly. I learned from last time that I should not alter or close my trade purely based on emotion, and to just wait till the market hits my stop loss or take profit. I included a trailing stop loss of 60 pips this time, but I have no evidence to base that number range on. The trade is currently open and I am down about 30 pips.
Although I am not labeling this trade as a loser yet, I can definitely see a lot of holes in my trading strategy. The most obvious mistake in my eyes right now is my use of indicators. Currently all my trades are purely based on what my indicators say, and since I do not have any back-tested data to support the credibility of my indicators, it feels a lot like strategic gambling. Another issue is that I feel far too reliant on indicators alone. I think that if I can find ways to include various types of analysis efficiently and evenly in my trading plan I will become a much more skillful and well-rounded trader. In order to combat these two issues I will begin forming various types of trading strategies this weekend and back-test them all extensively. I also plan on researching more on price action, order flow, and Naked Forex.
Once again any and all feedback is welcome. I am just beginning Forex, but it had been a huge passion of mine and I don't plan on stopping anytime soon.

I've been following many free resources on youtube and twitter to generate trading ideas. Some of them are suspicious; some are more like boasting their wining trades but never post any losing trades. I see many people ask about trading ideas/resources, so I want to briefly share some resources I find useful.

Twitter resources:

@ TicTocTick

Instrument: Mostly SPX/SPY/ES
Technique: orderflow
Highlights: TicTocTick is amazingly good at levels, spotting sellers and buyers levels. Everyday he posts his plan for the next day of the following format: If open above X, long/short bias, target Y. If open below X, short/long bias, target Z. Intraday he sometimes send "warnings" of potential big sellers / buyers at certain level. His price target and long/short bias is often right in my experience. His levels are useful for day trades IMHO.
Notes: (1) even with his plan, one needs an actionable plan. (2) He sometimes delete his tweets. His day-by-day and intraday tweets are more actionable than his longer term view. (3) he sometimes tweets political and controversial non-stock related things.

Trade transparency: 0/5 (doesn't post any trades)
Live update in-time: 5/5 (updates very frequently)
Actionable trading plan: 1/5 (good at levels and price targets. need your own plan)
Live interaction: 0/5 (no interaction)
Educational: 2/5 (can learn the technique from other resources. TicTock doesn't teach you directly)

@ tradingwarz

Instrument: Mainly SPY/SPX/ES
Technique: candlestick patterns, Fib levels, support and resistance levels etc
Style: only day trading
Highlights: he diligently post daily plan and many educational resources, sometimes intraday updates. Had many good trades.
Notes: I haven't followed him long but so far so good. He also recently has educational youtube videos.

Trade transparency: X/5 (hard to measure)
Live update in-time: 2.5/5 (updates frequently)
Actionable trading plan: 3.5/5
Live interaction: X/5
Educational: 5/5 (youtube videos)

@ traderstewie

Instrument: Stocks
Technique: candlestick patterns, support and resistance levels, trendlines, channels etc
Style: swing trade, 5min chart to find entry
Highlights: decent probability for picking explosive stocks. I have learned a lot about different trading set-ups from the free blog post: http://theimpatienttrader.blogspot.com/
Trade transparency: 1/5 (posting winning trades afterwards. Sometimes discuss stocks on watch)

Live update in-time: 1/5
Actionable trading plan: 1/5
Live interaction: 0/5
Educational: 5+/5

Youtube resources:

Conquer trading and investing. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN2WmKUchJpIcS1MupY-BuA

Instrument: SPX/SPY, Forex, Cryptocurrency,, Gold and Silver.
Style: holding for a few hours for SPX/SPY, swing trade for all
Timeframe: 8H for analysis. Lower time frame for entry.
Trading frequency: 1-2 trades per week.
Highlights: For SPX, he rode the big drop down in March; rode the rally up, and rode some pullbacks down in April. Got chopped in May. Now he's positinoning long. He also did well in Gold and Silverthis month. He only uses candle sticks, support and resistance lines, trendlines, and sometimes true trend indicator. He doesn't use volume though.
Youtube style: 2 videos every trading day: (1) live at 9am ET for 1-2 hours and talk about his plan and market analysis. Sometimes he trades during the live session (enter / exit). (2) after market closes he summarizes the day, and talks about plans for the next day. (3) Every weekend he gives out his technical analysis for the next week.
What I like: His levels on the chart are very good. He is also very transparent about his trades no matter whether it's winning or losing. He also explains the general economic environment.

Trade transparency: 4/5 (not knowing trading size; but knowing entry/exit)
Real-time update: 2.5/5 (two times a day)
Actionable trading plan: 5/5
Live interaction: 3.5/5 (some interaction on youtube live; Jordan responses to youtube comments)
Educational: 4/5

Blaze Capital: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq0BCGckWWjrnV8YdYO24JA

Instrument: All the stocks except penny stocks
Style: day trade, swing trade options
Timeframe: all time frames. Mostly 5min, 1H, 1D, 1W, 1M.
Trading frequency: very frequent. multiple trades per day.
Highlights: Justin is very good at seeing through market maker manipulation and highly manipulated stocks. He often explained his plan and his outlook (especially in OPEX days) in his YouTube channel. The stocks on their weekly watchlist tend to do very well. He does live Q&A on youtube as well everyday where one can ask him to look at a chart.
Youtube style: Three videos by his team every trading day: (1) live at 9:30am ET; does 1-2 live scalping trades. Explains what he thinks of the market. (might discontinue) (2) at noon: summarizes what happened and what he sees is happening later in the day. Some of his trading plans. (3) 4:15pm ET: summarizes today and looking forward to the rest of the week. Videos (1) and (2) include live Q&A. I've asked many questions on youtube. Every weekend has two videos talking about plans for the next week.
What I like: The Q&A and Justin's outlook of the market, his team's stock pick.

Other notes:

The scalping trades in the morning is not very suitable for small accounts since they will trade for example 100 shares of BA (~160) to scalp a few dollars per share.
Even though the stocks on their weekly watchlist does well very, one still need to come up with an actionable plan. Very often say they recommend stock A on Sunday, and on Monday it already gaps up big. They sometimes do YOLO options -- big risk big rewards-- options can go to 0.
Besides the free content, everyone can get a free one-week trial for their paid membership, or a 2-week free trial by winning a lottery game on their youtube ( what I did) or knowing someone in their group and get a referral. What I like about the group: (i) very frequently updates each day on SPY and stocks on the watchlist. (ii) all their positions, Profit / Loss are very transparent. I learned a lot about how to manage trades by observing their live trades. (iii) There are many very experienced traders in the group posting their trading ideas, plans, entry/exit, and there are many live discussions. (iv) There's a "helpdesk" in the group where members' questions will be answered in minutes. I often ask about my trading plan, entries/ targets.

Trade transparency: 0/5 (free content: not knowing entry/exit nor position size); ^{5+/5 (membership}\*)*
Live update in-time: 3.5/5 (free content: three times a day); ^{5+/5 (membership}\*)*
Actionable trading plan: 2.5/5 (free content); ^{4/5 (membership}\*)*
Live interaction: 4/5 (free content); ^{5+/5 (membership}\*)*
Educational: 5/5

Other resources:

Shadow trader free newsletter

https://www.shadowtrader.net/newsletter-category/swing-trade

Instrument: stocks
Highlights: I follow their free Shadow trader swing newsletter, where every few days they post some trading ideas and analysis with actionable plan. Their twitter account will also real-time update their entry/exit and trade management.
What I like: I enjoyed learning what they look at to find a good set-up and how to manage a trade. They also have a spreadsheet tracking all their positions and profit/loss. All the winning/losing trades are transparent.
Notes: Because of the current market volatility, during certain weeks the swing trading performance is quite shaky. Profits (per 100K account with no more than 30K invested each time): 2020YTD: +9K, 2019: +6K; 2018: +30K; 2017: +3K; 2016: +2.5K; 2015: -1.8K.

Trade transparency: 5/5
Live update in-time: 5/5 (updates frequently)
Actionable trading plan: 5/5
Live interaction: 0/5 (newsletter and twitter alerts only)
Educational: 4.5/5 (the newsletter explains set-ups, what sectors they are looking at)

I've spent much time looking for free contents, and I like the ones above. Also looking forward to hearing about other good/bad resources. I might also update this post if there are enough interests. NFA

Due to popular demand I've decided to bring this series back for a week 2 and I'll continue to release 3-5 trading ideas every Saturday. How do you guys feel about the name of this series? Would you like me to change the name to something like "Setup Saturdays" or are you guys cool with the current naming scheme?
So this week I wanted to be a lot more in depth in my analysis and setups since I didn't think I was super clear last week with my reasoning on some the setups. I want these posts to be as beginner friendly as possible because there's a lot more beginners in this Subreddit than I had realized. I want you to use this as an educational tool and not as a signal service as a result I'm going to give you possible trade setups and I want you to be the judge of whether you should enter once/if price gets to that point since I feel like that will benefit beginners in the long run. I got a couple questions about top down time frame analysis so that'll be a focus of today's post. Scroll down to NZDJPY if you really want an in-depth look at how I perform top down time frame analysis.
I'll include a picture of a chart and my TradingView chart so if you want to zoom in and out of the chart you'll have that ability to do so.
Quick Disclaimer: Some of the charts pricing might be off by a bit since I started working on this during the New York session on Friday. If any of the charts are impacted in a way that alters the setup I'll be sure to update the charts before I post this on Saturday. Just gotta hope that hope that Powell doesn't break the market or else I might have to redo this entire post.
AUDUSD:

AUDUSD Daily
TradingView Link For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/AUDUSD/Wb5K2bS8-AUDUSD-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Which way is the trend pointing? It looks like it's pointing up which we can see with the green trend line but how about we zoom in to the 4 hour char to see if that's actually the case.
Tip: When drawing a trend line, especially on the daily and higher time frames, remember to hit as many wicks as possible since they are relevant and not just some anomaly you can ignore.

AUDUSD 4 Hour
TradingView Link For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/AUDUSD/aah8294z-AUDUSD-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: When we got close to where we are with price and we draw a Fibonacci Retracement from the point where price took off to the point where price peaked we can see that price came down to .5 Fibonacci level where it then started going up again. Coincidence? Possibly. As a result I believe that price could continue higher and it would be justified if it did. However, if we look at the trend lines we can see that price appears to have broke put of of our major trend line (Green) which means that price could fall to the downside if it's actually a breakout. Price then appears like it would then adhere to the new minor trend line (Red). There's also the possibility that this was just a fake breakout and price could go up and adhere to green trend line. I'm going to have a selling bias on this trade since price looks like it double topped at the highs of this year and it looks like we could see price fall. I'm leaning towards the drop of price due to the symmetrical triangle pattern created by the major and minor trend line and looks like price is going to get pushed down which we should get an idea of soon.
Tip: Every time price makes a large move and falls/rises after making a peak/valley always pull out the Fibonacci retracement tool to see if price will bounce from the .382, .5, or .618 levels as they are the most significant levels. This can tell you if you're going to likely get a trend continuation.

AUDUSD 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/AUDUSD/IHgrnfYs-AUDUSD-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: I drew out multiple different scenarios which I think can play out since like I said before we're not trying to predict a single movement but we're preparing to be reactive to an ideal condition which may be thrown at us. Remember that major trend line we drew in on the daily chart well it's going to play a large role here. This trend line has been in the making since March so we're not just going to brush it off. The trend line appears to have been broken and we seem to be sticking that minor trend line after the break of the symmetrical triangle pattern. After the break of the symmetrical triangle pattern price usually gets pushed heavily to one side and it looks like price is wanting to get pushed to the downside. As a result, I'm going to really keep on eyes on scenario the blue arrows display since I think it's the most probable. Looking at the scenario there are going to be two potentially good entry points for a sell. The first being when price goes up to retest the green trend line which would also serve as a bounce from our red trend line. Once we get that bounce we could enter in for a sell with a take profit hopefully somewhere around the .66 area. Another good entry would be when price breaks the zone of support of .68 and after it retests it. Wait for a confirmation candlestick pattern showing price will fall when retesting (i.e. railroad track, bullish engulfment candle, evening star, shooting star, etc.). Look for these candlestick patterns on the 15 minute chart. Once you got the confirmation take the sell and ride price down to the .66 zone. The other scenario that could occur is we could see price go back into the green trend line by breaking the red trend line (Orange Arrows). If this occurs we want to catch the retest bounce of the red trend line and ride price up to the high of the year which is at .702. At that point price could break the resistance at which point we could catch the retest of the zone and ride price up. Or it could go up to .702 create a triple top and fall. If you get a candlestick confirmation saying it'll fall then take a sell at the high of the year.
NZDUSD:
If there's something I really like in Forex it's definitely got to be harmonic patterns due to their high accuracy. NZDUSD just recently completed one of them and this is a really good indicator of what price is going to do.

NZDUSD Daily
TradingView Chart For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDUSD/zQpHzUcK-NZDUSD-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Yes, we have trend line that says that price is going up however I make exceptions for Harmonic patterns since they are accurate about 80%-90% of the time. The pattern you see above is know as a Bearish Bat Pattern. Like the name says it's an indicator that price is going to go Bearish so although the trend line is going up I'm going to have a bearish bias on this trade.

NZDUSD 4 Hour
TradingView Chart For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDUSD/C29kpCyO-NZDUSD-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Not really much to add here just tossed on a Fibonacci retracement tool from where price took off to the peak just to check for any potential support from any of the major levels which we don't appear to have. We'll go a lot more in-depth on this pair on the 1 hour chart since that's where things get interesting.

NZDUSD 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDUSD/dKJatcM7-NZDUSD-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Looking at price we can see that since June 11th price has been trading in a boxed consolidation range. Again I drew out the possibilities I believe could be ideal for us. Remember that I said Harmonics work 80%-90%. Well that means that they fail 10%-20% of the time which is definitely not something we can neglect. We can see that there's a descending triangle which price is reaching the end of. This means that price is getting ready to move to one direction since big moves always come after consolidation. If it moves to upside wait for price to close above the the spot marked D then you can enter for a buy and ride price up to the .67525 zone where price could break to upside or bounce back down (Orange Arrow). Remember to wait for it to actually close above point D since it could create a triple top and drive price back down. It's the same procedure as AUDUSD here if it makes this move where if it breaks it then catch the retest and if it looks like it's wanting to fall down wait for a confirmation pattern. If it breaks the box to the downside and breaks the support zone then take a sell and ride price down to the trend line at which point you should close the trade as there's a chance price could move against you and it's best to secure profits while you can. Once at the trend line it could bounce and if it does you should be able to ride price up to that .67525 zone (Green Arrow). If price breaks the trend line then wait for the retest and you should be able to ride price down pretty far (Red Arrows). I think you should be able to ride it down to .5918 zone but you'll have to keep your on it.
EURNZD:

EURNZD Daily
TradingView Link For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/EURNZD/jzgmGcRe-EURNZD-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Well we got a pretty clear descending channel and price looks like it's at the top part of the channel currently so we're going to want to look for some optimal selling conditions due to the down trend.

EURNZD 4 Hour
TradingView Link For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/EURNZD/YzOpvcH7-EURNZD-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Looking at the 4 hour chart we can see that there appears to be a symmetrical triangle coming to it's end meaning price is getting ready to get pushed to a side. I believe it'll break the triangle and fall to the downside so once you see it break it would be a good idea to take a sell and ride price down to that support zone at 1.7187. Price could also briefly break to the upside then bounce off the top of the channel and it does take a trade from the bounce and ride price down to the same support zone. At that point, I'll leave it up to you to determine how you think price will go and what you should be looking for. Consider it to be a little quiz if you want to think of it like that. You've got my charts so use them as a reference since I've already marked some crucial support/resistance zones which we should keep our on for the next couple weeks.

EURNZD 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/EURNZD/ICWvgEsg-EURNZD-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: There's nothing that special on the one hour chart that I have to point out since I think we pretty much got all the big stuff out of the way on our analysis of the 4 hour chart. Be sure to get a good sell in there since there are two potentially good setups which I've outlined for you. Also be sure to be careful and wait for the bounce of the channel if price goes that way since there's a chance price could break the channel and I don't want you to take a loss because you were impatient.
NZDJPY:
This pair is going to be really fun since we're going to be looking through a lot of time frames so if you really want to learn about a top down approach to analyzing time frames and trends then pay very close attention to how I break down this trade.

NZDJPY Monthly
TradingView Link For Monthly: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/jZh4F2Jv-NZDJPY-Monthly-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Yes, we're actually going to be looking at the monthly chart. I bet you guys don't do that very often. Looking at it we can see that price has been following a clear down trend line since late 2014. If you look at the wick of this month's candle you can see that it appears to have touched the trend line meaning we could see a good opportunity to catch a sell since it had just recently bounced off. Let's take a look at lower time frames to see if this continues to be true.

NZDJPY Weekly
TradingView Link For Weekly: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/dpvI29BB-NZDJPY-Weekly-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: When zooming into the weekly we can see that using the wicks of the candles we can actually draw a channel for the low portion that runs pretty much in parallel to the trend line we drew on the monthly chart. We can see that price clearly bounced from the trend line and I think this gives us good reason to believe in the coming weeks we could see the price drop. Also looking at the Bollinger Bands we can see that price also bounced from the top band which also supports a drop of price. Let's go into the daily to see if we can get a better idea.

NZDJPY Daily
TradingView Link For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/NbWLURkU-NZDJPY-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Looking at the daily time frame we can see that price is currently consolidated and remember big moves always come after consolidation. If you look closely however you can see that price looks like it's about to break the 200 day EMA (Orange line). If it breaks the EMA we could see price drop pretty far at an accelerated rate. Besides those couple observations there's not much else going on with the daily chart.

NZDJPY 4 Hour
TradingView Link For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/d1kaogH5-NZDJPY-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Would you look at that, it looks like we got a descending triangle on the 4 hour chart which looks like it's coming to an end. Looking at price it looks like it's wanting to push to the downside. Once you get a break below the lows of the day of June 11th I think it would be a safe bet to take a sell trade and ride it down for 66.825 for this week. If it breaks the 66.825 support zone then I'll definitely take a sell and try to ride price down to the bottom of the channel which we drew on the weekly chart. There's also the possibility that price could take support at any of these support zones and then head back up to test the top of the channel. At which point I'll be looking to get into a sell at the top of the channel but I won't ride price up to the channel since at this current point in time I feel like there's a large amount of risk in that.

NZDJPY 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/83b47mFS-NZDJPY-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Not much more to add here since I think by this point we got the entire story so I'm not going to say much more about the 1 hour chart since I think the analysis for the 4 hour chart also sums this up pretty well.
Well that was a lot of information to go through and I hope you found some value in this since it took me quite a few hours to put this together for you guys. Truth be told, I spent most of Friday working on this so I hope at least one person finds some value in which case I'll consider it a win.
So you guys tired of me yet or do you want me to continue this series for a week 3? It takes a lot of time and effort to put this together so I'll only do it if people want it or else I'll pretty much feel like I wasted my time. I might put together a little lesson on how to use the COT in order to catch some big reversal moves in the market since the COT pretty much tells you what the hedge funds are doing and you also want to trade with the hedge funds and institutions. It'll probably take a couple weeks since I'll have to compile some data together and wait for a setup before putting that out but I'll be working on it. Are there any other things you may want explained? Let me know and I'll try to find setups which contain the topic you may want more details on. I hope you have a great trading week!

https://preview.redd.it/gp18bjnlabr41.jpg?width=768&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6054e7f52e8d52da403016139ae43e0e799abf15
Download PDF of this article here: https://docdro.id/6eLgUPo
In light of the recent fall in oil prices due to the Saudi-Russian dispute and dampening demand for oil due to the lockdowns implemented globally, O&G stocks have taken a severe beating, falling approximately 50% from their highs at the beginning of the year. Not spared from this onslaught is Hibiscus Petroleum Berhad (Hibiscus), a listed oil and gas (O&G) exploration and production (E&P) company.
Why invest in O&G stocks in this particularly uncertain period? For one, valuations of these stocks have fallen to multi-year lows, bringing the potential ROI on these stocks to attractive levels. Oil prices are cyclical, and are bound to return to the mean given a sufficiently long time horizon. The trick is to find those companies who can survive through this downturn and emerge into “normal” profitability once oil prices rebound.
In this article, I will explore the upsides and downsides of investing in Hibiscus. I will do my best to cater this report to newcomers to the O&G industry – rather than address exclusively experts and veterans of the O&G sector. As an equity analyst, I aim to provide a view on the company primarily, and will generally refrain from providing macro views on oil or opinions about secular trends of the sector. I hope you enjoy reading it!
Stock code: 5199.KL
Stock name: Hibiscus Petroleum Berhad
Financial information and financial reports: https://www.malaysiastock.biz/Corporate-Infomation.aspx?securityCode=5199
Company website: https://www.hibiscuspetroleum.com/

Company Snapshot

Hibiscus Petroleum Berhad (5199.KL) is an oil and gas (O&G) upstream exploration and production (E&P) company located in Malaysia. As an E&P company, their business can be basically described as:
· looking for oil,
· drawing it out of the ground, and
· selling it on global oil markets.
This means Hibiscus’s profits are particularly exposed to fluctuating oil prices. With oil prices falling to sub-$30 from about $60 at the beginning of the year, Hibiscus’s stock price has also fallen by about 50% YTD – from around RM 1.00 to RM 0.45 (as of 5 April 2020).
https://preview.redd.it/3dqc4jraabr41.png?width=641&format=png&auto=webp&s=7ba0e8614c4e9d781edfc670016a874b90560684
https://preview.redd.it/lvdkrf0cabr41.png?width=356&format=png&auto=webp&s=46f250a713887b06986932fa475dc59c7c28582e
While the company is domiciled in Malaysia, its two main oil producing fields are located in both Malaysia and the UK. The Malaysian oil field is commonly referred to as the North Sabah field, while the UK oil field is commonly referred to as the Anasuria oil field. Hibiscus has licenses to other oil fields in different parts of the world, notably the Marigold/Sunflower oil fields in the UK and the VIC cluster in Australia, but its revenues and profits mainly stem from the former two oil producing fields.
Given that it’s a small player and has only two primary producing oil fields, it’s not surprising that Hibiscus sells its oil to a concentrated pool of customers, with 2 of them representing 80% of its revenues (i.e. Petronas and BP). Fortunately, both these customers are oil supermajors, and are unlikely to default on their obligations despite low oil prices.
At RM 0.45 per share, the market capitalization is RM 714.7m and it has a trailing PE ratio of about 5x. It doesn’t carry any debt, and it hasn’t paid a dividend in its listing history. The MD, Mr. Kenneth Gerard Pereira, owns about 10% of the company’s outstanding shares.

Reserves (Total recoverable oil) & Production (bbl/day)

To begin analyzing the company, it’s necessary to understand a little of the industry jargon. We’ll start with Reserves and Production.
In general, there are three types of categories for a company’s recoverable oil volumes – Reserves, Contingent Resources and Prospective Resources. Reserves are those oil fields which are “commercial”, which is defined as below:
^{As defined by the SPE PRMS,} ^Reserves ^{are “… quantities of petroleum anticipated to be commercially recoverable by application of development projects to known accumulations from a given date forward under defined conditions.” Therefore, Reserves must be discovered (by drilling}, recoverable (with current technology), remaining in the subsurface (at the effective date of the evaluation) and “commercial” based on the development project proposed.)
^{Note that Reserves are associated with development projects. To be considered as “commercial”, there must be a firm intention to proceed with the project in a reasonable time frame (typically 5 years}, and such intention must be based upon all of the following criteria:)
^{- A reasonable assessment of the future economics of the development project meeting defined investment and operating criteria;} ^{- A reasonable expectation that there will be a market for all or at least the expected sales quantities of production required to justify development;} ^{- Evidence that the necessary production and transportation facilities are available or can be made available; and} ^{- Evidence that legal, contractual, environmental and other social and economic concerns will allow for the actual implementation of the recovery project being evaluated.}
Contingent Resources and Prospective Resources are further defined as below:
^- ^{Contingent Resources}^{: potentially recoverable volumes associated with a development plan that targets discovered volumes but is not (yet} commercial (as defined above); and) ^- ^{Prospective Resources}^{: potentially recoverable volumes associated with a development plan that targets as yet undiscovered volumes.}
In the industry lingo, we generally refer to Reserves as ‘P’ and Contingent Resources as ‘C’. These ‘P’ and ‘C’ resources can be further categorized into 1P/2P/3P resources and 1C/2C/3C resources, each referring to a low/medium/high estimate of the company’s potential recoverable oil volumes:
^{- Low/1C/1P estimate: there should be reasonable certainty that volumes actually recovered will equal or exceed the estimate;} ^{- Best/2C/2P estimate: there should be an equal likelihood of the actual volumes of petroleum being larger or smaller than the estimate; and} ^{- High/3C/3P estimate: there is a low probability that the estimate will be exceeded.}
Hence in the E&P industry, it is easy to see why most investors and analysts refer to the 2P estimate as the best estimate for a company’s actual recoverable oil volumes. This is because 2P reserves (‘2P’ referring to ‘Proved and Probable’) are a middle estimate of the recoverable oil volumes legally recognized as “commercial”.
However, there’s nothing stopping you from including 2C resources (riskier) or utilizing 1P resources (conservative) as your estimate for total recoverable oil volumes, depending on your risk appetite. In this instance, the company has provided a snapshot of its 2P and 2C resources in its analyst presentation:
https://preview.redd.it/o8qejdyc8br41.png?width=710&format=png&auto=webp&s=b3ab9be8f83badf0206adc982feda3a558d43e78
Basically, what the company is saying here is that by 2021, it will have classified as 2P reserves at least 23.7 million bbl from its Anasuria field and 20.5 million bbl from its North Sabah field – for total 2P reserves of 44.2 million bbl (we are ignoring the Australian VIC cluster as it is only estimated to reach first oil by 2022).
Furthermore, the company is stating that they have discovered (but not yet legally classified as “commercial”) a further 71 million bbl of oil from both the Anasuria and North Sabah fields, as well as the Marigold/Sunflower fields. If we include these 2C resources, the total potential recoverable oil volumes could exceed 100 million bbl.
In this report, we shall explore all valuation scenarios giving consideration to both 2P and 2C resources.
https://preview.redd.it/gk54qplf8br41.png?width=489&format=png&auto=webp&s=c905b7a6328432218b5b9dfd53cc9ef1390bd604
The company further targets a 2021 production rate of 20,000 bbl (LTM: 8,000 bbl), which includes 5,000 bbl from its Anasuria field (LTM: 2,500 bbl) and 7,000 bbl from its North Sabah field (LTM: 5,300 bbl).
This is a substantial increase in forecasted production from both existing and prospective oil fields. If it materializes, annual production rate could be as high as 7,300 mmbbl, and 2021 revenues (given FY20 USD/bbl of $60) could exceed RM 1.5 billion (FY20: RM 988 million).
However, this targeted forecast is quite a stretch from current production levels. Nevertheless, we shall consider all provided information in estimating a valuation for Hibiscus.
To understand Hibiscus’s oil production capacity and forecast its revenues and profits, we need to have a better appreciation of the performance of its two main cash-generating assets – the North Sabah field and the Anasuria field.

North Sabah oil field
https://preview.redd.it/62nssexj8br41.png?width=1003&format=png&auto=webp&s=cd78f86d51165fb9a93015e49496f7f98dad64dd
Hibiscus owns a 50% interest in the North Sabah field together with its partner Petronas, and has production rights over the field up to year 2040. The asset contains 4 oil fields, namely the St Joseph field, South Furious field, SF 30 field and Barton field.
For the sake of brevity, we shall not delve deep into the operational aspects of the fields or the contractual nature of its production sharing contract (PSC). We’ll just focus on the factors which relate to its financial performance. These are:
· Average uptime
· Total oil sold
· Average realized oil price
· Average OPEX per bbl
With regards to average uptime, we can see that the company maintains relative high facility availability, exceeding 90% uptime in all quarters of the LTM with exception of Jul-Sep 2019. The dip in average uptime was due to production enhancement projects and maintenance activities undertaken to improve the production capacity of the St Joseph and SF30 oil fields.
Hence, we can conclude that management has a good handle on operational performance. It also implies that there is little room for further improvement in production resulting from increased uptime.
As North Sabah is under a production sharing contract (PSC), there is a distinction between gross oil production and net oil production. The former relates to total oil drawn out of the ground, whereas the latter refers to Hibiscus’s share of oil production after taxes, royalties and expenses are accounted for. In this case, we want to pay attention to net oil production, not gross.
We can arrive at Hibiscus’s total oil sold for the last twelve months (LTM) by adding up the total oil sold for each of the last 4 quarters. Summing up the figures yields total oil sold for the LTM of approximately 2,075,305 bbl.
Then, we can arrive at an average realized oil price over the LTM by averaging the average realized oil price for the last 4 quarters, giving us an average realized oil price over the LTM of USD 68.57/bbl. We can do the same for average OPEX per bbl, giving us an average OPEX per bbl over the LTM of USD 13.23/bbl.
Thus, we can sum up the above financial performance of the North Sabah field with the following figures:
· Total oil sold: 2,075,305 bbl
· Average realized oil price: USD 68.57/bbl
· Average OPEX per bbl: USD 13.23/bbl

Anasuria oil field
https://preview.redd.it/586u4kfo8br41.png?width=1038&format=png&auto=webp&s=7580fc7f7df7e948754d025745a5cf47d4393c0f
Doing the same exercise as above for the Anasuria field, we arrive at the following financial performance for the Anasuria field:
· Total oil sold: 1,073,304 bbl
· Average realized oil price: USD 63.57/bbl
· Average OPEX per bbl: USD 23.22/bbl
As gas production is relatively immaterial, and to be conservative, we shall only consider the crude oil production from the Anasuria field in forecasting revenues.

Valuation (Method 1)

Putting the figures from both oil fields together, we get the following data:
https://preview.redd.it/7y6064dq8br41.png?width=700&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a4120563a011cf61fc6090e1cd5932602599dc2
Given that we have determined LTM EBITDA of RM 632m, the next step would be to subtract ITDA (interest, tax, depreciation & amortization) from it to obtain estimated LTM Net Profit. Using FY2020’s ITDA of approximately RM 318m as a guideline, we arrive at an estimated LTM Net Profit of RM 314m (FY20: 230m). Given the current market capitalization of RM 714.7m, this implies a trailing LTM PE of 2.3x.
Performing a sensitivity analysis given different oil prices, we arrive at the following net profit table for the company under different oil price scenarios, assuming oil production rate and ITDA remain constant:
https://preview.redd.it/xixge5sr8br41.png?width=433&format=png&auto=webp&s=288a00f6e5088d01936f0217ae7798d2cfcf11f2
From the above exercise, it becomes apparent that Hibiscus has a breakeven oil price of about USD 41.8863/bbl, and has a lot of operating leverage given the exponential rate of increase in its Net Profit with each consequent increase in oil prices.
Considering that the oil production rate (EBITDA) is likely to increase faster than ITDA’s proportion to revenues (fixed costs), at an implied PE of 4.33x, it seems likely that an investment in Hibiscus will be profitable over the next 10 years (with the assumption that oil prices will revert to the mean in the long-term).

Valuation (Method 2)

Of course, there are a lot of assumptions behind the above method of valuation. Hence, it would be prudent to perform multiple methods of valuation and compare the figures to one another.
As opposed to the profit/loss assessment in Valuation (Method 1), another way of performing a valuation would be to estimate its balance sheet value, i.e. total revenues from 2P Reserves, and assign a reasonable margin to it.
https://preview.redd.it/o2eiss6u8br41.png?width=710&format=png&auto=webp&s=03960cce698d9cedb076f3d5f571b3c59d908fa8
From the above, we understand that Hibiscus’s 2P reserves from the North Sabah and Anasuria fields alone are approximately 44.2 mmbbl (we ignore contribution from Australia’s VIC cluster as it hasn’t been developed yet).
Doing a similar sensitivity analysis of different oil prices as above, we arrive at the following estimated total revenues and accumulated net profit:
https://preview.redd.it/h8hubrmw8br41.png?width=450&format=png&auto=webp&s=6d23f0f9c3dafda89e758b815072ba335467f33e
Let’s assume that the above average of RM 9.68 billion in total realizable revenues from current 2P reserves holds true. If we assign a conservative Net Profit margin of 15% (FY20: 23%; past 5 years average: 16%), we arrive at estimated accumulated Net Profit from 2P Reserves of RM 1.452 billion. Given the current market capitalization of RM 714 million, we might be able to say that the equity is worth about twice the current share price.
However, it is understandable that some readers might feel that the figures used in the above estimate (e.g. net profit margin of 15%) were randomly plucked from the sky. So how do we reconcile them with figures from the financial statements? Fortunately, there appears to be a way to do just that.
Intangible Assets
I refer you to a figure in the financial statements which provides a shortcut to the valuation of 2P Reserves. This is the carrying value of Intangible Assets on the Balance Sheet.
As of 2QFY21, that amount was RM 1,468,860,000 (i.e. RM 1.468 billion).
https://preview.redd.it/hse8ttb09br41.png?width=881&format=png&auto=webp&s=82e48b5961c905fe9273cb6346368de60202ebec
Quite coincidentally, one might observe that this figure is dangerously close to the estimated accumulated Net Profit from 2P Reserves of RM 1.452 billion we calculated earlier. But why would this amount matter at all?
To answer that, I refer you to the notes of the Annual Report FY20 (AR20). On page 148 of the AR20, we find the following two paragraphs:
^{E&E assets comprise of rights and concession and conventional studies. Following the acquisition of a concession right to explore a licensed area, the costs incurred such as geological and geophysical surveys, drilling, commercial appraisal costs and other directly attributable costs of exploration and appraisal including technical and administrative costs, are capitalised as conventional studies, presented as intangible assets.}
^{E&E assets are assessed for impairment when facts and circumstances suggest that the carrying amount of an E&E asset may exceed its recoverable amount. The Group will allocate E&E assets to cash generating unit (“CGU”}s or groups of CGUs for the purpose of assessing such assets for impairment. Each CGU or group of units to which an E&E asset is allocated will not be larger than an operating segment as disclosed in Note 39 to the financial statements.)
Hence, we can determine that firstly, the intangible asset value represents capitalized costs of acquisition of the oil fields, including technical exploration costs and costs of acquiring the relevant licenses. Secondly, an impairment review will be carried out when “the carrying amount of an E&E asset may exceed its recoverable amount”, with E&E assets being allocated to “cash generating units” (CGU) for the purposes of assessment.
On page 169 of the AR20, we find the following:
^{Carrying amounts of the Group’s intangible assets, oil and gas assets and FPSO are reviewed for possible impairment annually including any indicators of impairment. For the purpose of assessing impairment, assets are grouped at the lowest level CGUs for which there is a separately identifiable cash flow available. These CGUs are based on operating areas, represented by the 2011 North Sabah EOR PSC (“North Sabah”}, the Anasuria Cluster, the Marigold and Sunflower fields, the VIC/P57 exploration permit (“VIC/P57”) and the VIC/L31 production license (“VIC/L31”).)
So apparently, the CGUs that have been assigned refer to the respective oil producing fields, two of which include the North Sabah field and the Anasuria field. In order to perform the impairment review, estimates of future cash flow will be made by management to assess the “recoverable amount” (as described above), subject to assumptions and an appropriate discount rate.
Hence, what we can gather up to now is that management will estimate future recoverable cash flows from a CGU (i.e. the North Sabah and Anasuria oil fields), compare that to their carrying value, and perform an impairment if their future recoverable cash flows are less than their carrying value. In other words, if estimated accumulated profits from the North Sabah and Anasuria oil fields are less than their carrying value, an impairment is required.
So where do we find the carrying values for the North Sabah and Anasuria oil fields? Further down on page 184 in the AR20, we see the following:
^{Included in rights and concession are the carrying amounts of producing field licenses in the Anasuria Cluster amounting to RM668,211,518 (2018: RM687,664,530}, producing field licenses in North Sabah amounting to RM471,031,008 (2018: RM414,333,116))
Hence, we can determine that the carrying values for the North Sabah and Anasuria oil fields are RM 471m and RM 668m respectively. But where do we find the future recoverable cash flows of the fields as estimated by management, and what are the assumptions used in that calculation?
Fortunately, we find just that on page 185:
^{17 INTANGIBLE ASSETS (CONTINUED})
^(a Anasuria Cluster)
^{The Directors have concluded that there is no impairment indicator for Anasuria Cluster during the current financial year. In the previous financial year, due to uncertainties in crude oil prices, the Group has assessed the recoverable amount of the intangible assets, oil and gas assets and FPSO relating to the Anasuria Cluster. The recoverable amount is determined using the FVLCTS model based on discounted cash flows (“DCF”} derived from the expected cash in/outflow pattern over the production lives.)
^{The key assumptions used to determine the recoverable amount for the Anasuria Cluster were as follows:}
⁽ⁱ Discount rate of 10%;)
⁽ⁱⁱ Future cost inflation factor of 2% per annum;)
⁽ⁱⁱⁱ Oil price forecast based on the oil price forward curve from independent parties; and,)
^(iv Oil production profile based on the assessment by independent oil and gas reserve experts.)
^{Based on the assessments performed, the Directors concluded that the recoverable amount calculated based on the valuation model is higher than the carrying amount.}
^(b North Sabah)
^{The acquisition of the North Sabah assets was completed in the previous financial year. Details of the acquisition are as disclosed in Note 15 to the financial statements.}
^{The Directors have concluded that there is no impairment indicator for North Sabah during the current financial year.}
Here, we can see that the recoverable amount of the Anasuria field was estimated based on a DCF of expected future cash flows over the production life of the asset. The key assumptions used by management all seem appropriate, including a discount rate of 10% and oil price and oil production estimates based on independent assessment. From there, management concludes that the recoverable amount of the Anasuria field is higher than its carrying amount (i.e. no impairment required). Likewise, for the North Sabah field.
How do we interpret this? Basically, what management is saying is that given a 10% discount rate and independent oil price and oil production estimates, the accumulated profits (i.e. recoverable amount) from both the North Sabah and the Anasuria fields exceed their carrying amounts of RM 471m and RM 668m respectively.
In other words, according to management’s own estimates, the carrying value of the Intangible Assets of RM 1.468 billion approximates the accumulated Net Profit recoverable from 2P reserves.
To conclude Valuation (Method 2), we arrive at the following:

	Our estimates	Management estimates
Accumulated Net Profit from 2P Reserves	RM 1.452 billion	RM 1.468 billion

Financials

By now, we have established the basic economics of Hibiscus’s business, including its revenues (i.e. oil production and oil price scenarios), costs (OPEX, ITDA), profitability (breakeven, future earnings potential) and balance sheet value (2P reserves, valuation). Moving on, we want to gain a deeper understanding of the 3 statements to anticipate any blind spots and risks. We’ll refer to the financial statements of both the FY20 annual report and the 2Q21 quarterly report in this analysis.
For the sake of brevity, I’ll only point out those line items which need extra attention, and skip over the rest. Feel free to go through the financial statements on your own to gain a better familiarity of the business.
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Income Statement
First, we’ll start with the Income Statement on page 135 of the AR20. Revenues are straightforward, as we’ve discussed above. Cost of Sales and Administrative Expenses fall under the jurisdiction of OPEX, which we’ve also seen earlier. Other Expenses are mostly made up of Depreciation & Amortization of RM 115m.
Finance Costs are where things start to get tricky. Why does a company which carries no debt have such huge amounts of finance costs? The reason can be found in Note 8, where it is revealed that the bulk of finance costs relate to the unwinding of discount of provision for decommissioning costs of RM 25m (Note 32).
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This actually refers to the expected future costs of restoring the Anasuria and North Sabah fields to their original condition once the oil reserves have been depleted. Accounting standards require the company to provide for these decommissioning costs as they are estimable and probable. The way the decommissioning costs are accounted for is the same as an amortized loan, where the initial carrying value is recognized as a liability and the discount rate applied is reversed each year as an expense on the Income Statement. However, these expenses are largely non-cash in nature and do not necessitate a cash outflow every year (FY20: RM 69m).
Unwinding of discount on non-current other payables of RM 12m relate to contractual payments to the North Sabah sellers. We will discuss it later.
Taxation is another tricky subject, and is even more significant than Finance Costs at RM 161m. In gist, Hibiscus is subject to the 38% PITA (Petroleum Income Tax Act) under Malaysian jurisdiction, and the 30% Petroleum tax + 10% Supplementary tax under UK jurisdiction. Of the RM 161m, RM 41m of it relates to deferred tax which originates from the difference between tax treatment and accounting treatment on capitalized assets (accelerated depreciation vs straight-line depreciation). Nonetheless, what you should take away from this is that the tax expense is a tangible expense and material to breakeven analysis.
Fortunately, tax is a variable expense, and should not materially impact the cash flow of Hibiscus in today’s low oil price environment.
Note: Cash outflows for Tax Paid in FY20 was RM 97m, substantially below the RM 161m tax expense.
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Balance Sheet
The balance sheet of Hibiscus is unexciting; I’ll just bring your attention to those line items which need additional scrutiny. I’ll use the figures in the latest 2Q21 quarterly report (2Q21) and refer to the notes in AR20 for clarity.
We’ve already discussed Intangible Assets in the section above, so I won’t dwell on it again.
Moving on, the company has Equipment of RM 582m, largely relating to O&G assets (e.g. the Anasuria FPSO vessel and CAPEX incurred on production enhancement projects). Restricted cash and bank balances represent contractual obligations for decommissioning costs of the Anasuria Cluster, and are inaccessible for use in operations.
Inventories are relatively low, despite Hibiscus being an E&P company, so forex fluctuations on carrying value of inventories are relatively immaterial. Trade receivables largely relate to entitlements from Petronas and BP (both oil supermajors), and are hence quite safe from impairment. Other receivables, deposits and prepayments are significant as they relate to security deposits placed with sellers of the oil fields acquired; these should be ignored for cash flow purposes.
^{Note: Total cash and bank balances do not include approximately RM 105 m proceeds from the North Sabah December 2019 offtake (which was received in January 2020})
Cash and bank balances of RM 90m do not include RM 105m of proceeds from offtake received in 3Q21 (Jan 2020). Hence, the actual cash and bank balances as of 2Q21 approximate RM 200m.
Liabilities are a little more interesting. First, I’ll draw your attention to the significant Deferred tax liabilities of RM 457m. These largely relate to the amortization of CAPEX (i.e. Equipment and capitalized E&E expenses), which is given an accelerated depreciation treatment for tax purposes.
The way this works is that the government gives Hibiscus a favorable tax treatment on capital expenditures incurred via an accelerated depreciation schedule, so that the taxable income is less than usual. However, this leads to the taxable depreciation being utilized quicker than accounting depreciation, hence the tax payable merely deferred to a later period – when the tax depreciation runs out but accounting depreciation remains. Given the capital intensive nature of the business, it is understandable why Deferred tax liabilities are so large.
We’ve discussed Provision for decommissioning costs under the Finance Costs section earlier. They are also quite significant at RM 266m.
Notably, the Other Payables and Accruals are a hefty RM 431m. What do they relate to? Basically, they are contractual obligations to the sellers of the oil fields which are only payable upon oil prices reaching certain thresholds. Hence, while they are current in nature, they will only become payable when oil prices recover to previous highs, and are hence not an immediate cash outflow concern given today’s low oil prices.
Cash Flow Statement
There is nothing in the cash flow statement which warrants concern.
Notably, the company generated OCF of approximately RM 500m in FY20 and RM 116m in 2Q21. It further incurred RM 330m and RM 234m of CAPEX in FY20 and 2Q21 respectively, largely owing to production enhancement projects to increase the production rate of the Anasuria and North Sabah fields, which according to management estimates are accretive to ROI.
Tax paid was RM 97m in FY20 and RM 61m in 2Q21 (tax expense: RM 161m and RM 62m respectively).

Risks

There are a few obvious and not-so-obvious risks that one should be aware of before investing in Hibiscus. We shall not consider operational risks (e.g. uptime, OPEX) as they are outside the jurisdiction of the equity analyst. Instead, we shall focus on the financial and strategic risks largely outside the control of management. The main ones are:
· Oil prices remaining subdued for long periods of time
· Fluctuation of exchange rates
· Customer concentration risk
· 2P Reserves being less than estimated
· Significant current and non-current liabilities
· Potential issuance of equity
Oil prices remaining subdued
Of topmost concern in the minds of most analysts is whether Hibiscus has the wherewithal to sustain itself through this period of low oil prices (sub-$30). A quick and dirty estimate of annual cash outflow (i.e. burn rate) assuming a $20 oil world and historical production rates is between RM 50m-70m per year, which considering the RM 200m cash balance implies about 3-4 years of sustainability before the company runs out of cash and has to rely on external assistance for financing.
Table 1: Hibiscus EBITDA at different oil price and exchange rates
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The above table shows different EBITDA scenarios (RM ‘m) given different oil prices (left column) and USD:MYR exchange rates (top row). Currently, oil prices are $27 and USD:MYR is 1:4.36.
Given conservative assumptions of average OPEX/bbl of $20 (current: $15), we can safely say that the company will be loss-making as long as oil remains at $20 or below (red). However, we can see that once oil prices hit $25, the company can tank the lower-end estimate of the annual burn rate of RM 50m (orange), while at RM $27 it can sufficiently muddle through the higher-end estimate of the annual burn rate of RM 70m (green).
Hence, we can assume that as long as the average oil price over the next 3-4 years remains above $25, Hibiscus should come out of this fine without the need for any external financing.
Customer Concentration Risk
With regards to customer concentration risk, there is not much the analyst or investor can do except to accept the risk. Fortunately, 80% of revenues can be attributed to two oil supermajors (Petronas and BP), hence the risk of default on contractual obligations and trade receivables seems to be quite diminished.
2P Reserves being less than estimated
2P Reserves being less than estimated is another risk that one should keep in mind. Fortunately, the current market cap is merely RM 714m – at half of estimated recoverable amounts of RM 1.468 billion – so there’s a decent margin of safety. In addition, there are other mitigating factors which shall be discussed in the next section (‘Opportunities’).
Significant non-current and current liabilities
The significant non-current and current liabilities have been addressed in the previous section. It has been determined that they pose no threat to immediate cash flow due to them being long-term in nature (e.g. decommissioning costs, deferred tax, etc). Hence, for the purpose of assessing going concern, their amounts should not be a cause for concern.
Potential issuance of equity
Finally, we come to the possibility of external financing being required in this low oil price environment. While the company should last 3-4 years on existing cash reserves, there is always the risk of other black swan events materializing (e.g. coronavirus) or simply oil prices remaining muted for longer than 4 years.
Furthermore, management has hinted that they wish to acquire new oil assets at presently depressed prices to increase daily production rate to a targeted 20,000 bbl by end-2021. They have room to acquire debt, but they may also wish to issue equity for this purpose. Hence, the possibility of dilution to existing shareholders cannot be entirely ruled out.
However, given management’s historical track record of prioritizing ROI and optimal capital allocation, and in consideration of the fact that the MD owns 10% of outstanding shares, there is some assurance that any potential acquisitions will be accretive to EPS and therefore valuations.

Opportunities

As with the existence of risk, the presence of material opportunities also looms over the company. Some of them are discussed below:
· Increased Daily Oil Production Rate
· Inclusion of 2C Resources
· Future oil prices exceeding $50 and effects from coronavirus dissipating
Increased Daily Oil Production Rate
The first and most obvious opportunity is the potential for increased production rate. We’ve seen in the last quarter (2Q21) that the North Sabah field increased its daily production rate by approximately 20% as a result of production enhancement projects (infill drilling), lowering OPEX/bbl as a result. To vastly oversimplify, infill drilling is the process of maximizing well density by drilling in the spaces between existing wells to improve oil production.
The same improvements are being undertaken at the Anasuria field via infill drilling, subsea debottlenecking, water injection and sidetracking of existing wells. Without boring you with industry jargon, this basically means future production rate is likely to improve going forward.
By how much can the oil production rate be improved by? Management estimates in their analyst presentation that enhancements in the Anasuria field will be able to yield 5,000 bbl/day by 2021 (current: 2,500 bbl/day).
Similarly, improvements in the North Sabah field is expected to yield 7,000 bbl/day by 2021 (current: 5,300 bbl/day).
This implies a total 2021 expected daily production rate from the two fields alone of 12,000 bbl/day (current: 8,000 bbl/day). That’s a 50% increase in yields which we haven’t factored into our valuation yet.
Furthermore, we haven’t considered any production from existing 2C resources (e.g. Marigold/Sunflower) or any potential acquisitions which may occur in the future. By management estimates, this can potentially increase production by another 8,000 bbl/day, bringing total production to 20,000 bbl/day.
While this seems like a stretch of the imagination, it pays to keep them in mind when forecasting future revenues and valuations.
Just to play around with the numbers, I’ve come up with a sensitivity analysis of possible annual EBITDA at different oil prices and daily oil production rates:
Table 2: Hibiscus EBITDA at different oil price and daily oil production rates
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The left column represents different oil prices while the top row represents different daily oil production rates.
The green column represents EBITDA at current daily production rate of 8,000 bbl/day; the orange column represents EBITDA at targeted daily production rate of 12,000 bbl/day; while the purple column represents EBITDA at maximum daily production rate of 20,000 bbl/day.
Even conservatively assuming increased estimated annual ITDA of RM 500m (FY20: RM 318m), and long-term average oil prices of $50 (FY20: $60), the estimated Net Profit and P/E ratio is potentially lucrative at daily oil production rates of 12,000 bbl/day and above.
2C Resources
Since we’re on the topic of improved daily oil production rate, it bears to pay in mind the relatively enormous potential from Hibiscus’s 2C Resources. North Sabah’s 2C Resources alone exceed 30 mmbbl; while those from the yet undiagnosed Marigold/Sunflower fields also reach 30 mmbbl. Altogether, 2C Resources exceed 70 mmbbl, which dwarfs the 44 mmbbl of 2P Reserves we have considered up to this point in our valuation estimates.
To refresh your memory, 2C Resources represents oil volumes which have been discovered but are not yet classified as “commercial”. This means that there is reasonable certainty of the oil being recoverable, as opposed to simply being in the very early stages of exploration. So, to be conservative, we will imagine that only 50% of 2C Resources are eligible for reclassification to 2P reserves, i.e. 35 mmbbl of oil.
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This additional 35 mmbbl of oil represents an 80% increase to existing 2P reserves. Assuming the daily oil production rate increases similarly by 80%, we will arrive at 14,400 bbl/day of oil production. According to Table 2 above, this would yield an EBITDA of roughly RM 630m assuming $50 oil.
Comparing that estimated EBITDA to FY20’s actual EBITDA:

	FY20	FY21 (incl. 2C)	Difference
Daily oil production (bbl/day)	8,626	14,400	+66%
Average oil price (USD/bbl)	$68.57	$50	-27%
Average OPEX/bbl (USD)	$16.64	$20	+20%
EBITDA (RM ‘m)	632	630	-

Hence, even conservatively assuming lower oil prices and higher OPEX/bbl (which should decrease in the presence of higher oil volumes) than last year, we get approximately the same EBITDA as FY20.
For the sake of completeness, let’s assume that Hibiscus issues twice the no. of existing shares over the next 10 years, effectively diluting shareholders by 50%. Even without accounting for the possibility of the acquisition of new oil fields, at the current market capitalization of RM 714m, the prospective P/E would be about 10x. Not too shabby.
Future oil prices exceeding $50 and effects from coronavirus dissipating
Hibiscus shares have recently been hit by a one-two punch from oil prices cratering from $60 to $30, as a result of both the Saudi-Russian dispute and depressed demand for oil due to coronavirus. This has massively increased supply and at the same time hugely depressed demand for oil (due to the globally coordinated lockdowns being implemented).
Given a long enough timeframe, I fully expect OPEC+ to come to an agreement and the economic effects from the coronavirus to dissipate, allowing oil prices to rebound. As we equity investors are aware, oil prices are cyclical and are bound to recover over the next 10 years.
When it does, valuations of O&G stocks (including Hibiscus’s) are likely to improve as investors overshoot expectations and begin to forecast higher oil prices into perpetuity, as they always tend to do in good times. When that time arrives, Hibiscus’s valuations are likely to become overoptimistic as all O&G stocks tend to do during oil upcycles, resulting in valuations far exceeding reasonable estimates of future earnings. If you can hold the shares up until then, it’s likely you will make much more on your investment than what we’ve been estimating.

Conclusion

Wrapping up what we’ve discussed so far, we can conclude that Hibiscus’s market capitalization of RM 714m far undershoots reasonable estimates of fair value even under conservative assumptions of recoverable oil volumes and long-term average oil prices. As a value investor, I hesitate to assign a target share price, but it’s safe to say that this stock is worth at least RM 1.00 (current: RM 0.45). Risk is relatively contained and the upside far exceeds the downside. While I have no opinion on the short-term trajectory of oil prices, I can safely recommend this stock as a long-term Buy based on fundamental research.

Not many people like to talk about bear markets, especially not when the more emotive terms such as "Stock market crash" are used. It's often looked upon as fear mongering, and sensationalism. Preparation is practical, though.

This post is not intended to be fear mongering. In fact I want to discuss ways we can look at the market and plan for different scenarios that can mean we have no reason to be afraid.
Even if the S&P500 was to trade at 1,000 (big drop from current price (Today is the 31st August 2019, price is 2,946), we can plan and act in such ways this is a non harmful event for us. Particularly those who have net worth's to protect that has heavy stocks exposure.
This is not going to be one of these, "It's the top RIGHT NOW ... everyone panic!" sort of posts. Regardless of my views on this, I know this is a message that would not be well received. You do not know me, and too often people have cried wolf on this and been laughably incorrect. Instead what I will do is describe price moves in the indices that most people will have every reason to believe at this point can't happen.
Hopefully, they do not happen. I am not gleefully fangirling for a market crash. I just think there is prudence in preparation. These events will not happen in the hours after I post this, so I'd ask you kindly suspend prejudices. There is nothing to be gained by bickering over opinions of whether this will happen or not. I just want to give my perspective on how a person should protect themselves after it happens, if it does.
I'll cover some of the things I'd forecast will be points people will want to raise or questions likely to be asked. If you'd like to skip to the forecast and subsequent trade plan you can scroll down to the line break (unless you're going to make a common comment, then please read the following section first).

Why Do I think My Opinion Matters?

Many of you may be smarter than I in many ways, but few of you will have spent as much time assessing charting patterns as I have. Indeed, many people will scoff at the very idea of "lines on a chart" being worth anything. I'm not here to have this debate, I fully agree your view point is rational and logical. If I'd not spent years watching price charts every day, I'd think the same.
I focus mostly on Forex markets. I know these well. There are many ways currencies look like they may move that are ways they should not move unless there is big problems in stocks. These are nagging warnings. The attitude to risk in the Forex markets is negative, and stock markets show dangerous patterns. I watch these topping sorts of patterns every day. I see them in intra-day crashes, intra-week crashes and intra-month crashes.
Most major moves fit into these patterns, and when the same patterns are applied to previous stock markets in the months before they crashed, the way the patterns form and then complete (in a crash) is the same. From my perspective, these are just intra-decade crashes. There is little technical difference on the charts - although it's very different in the real world it affects.
This is why I am doing this in a "IF we see this ... then this is likely". I know at this point in the pattern, my methods predict something that will be highly unusual. If that thing happens, if we do not crash after that, we'd be breaking the trend of all market crashes in history (this is not likely, it does not seem the smart way to bet your net worth).

Technical Analysis is Tea Leaves!

You're welcome to your opinion on this, and I do understand your point of view. I will not post examples to try and prove my perspective on it, since it will always be called "curve-fitting". All I will say is nothing I have done in my years of trading has involved me persuading others what I do works. I do not sell training or anything of the like. I've spent many years using the things I've learned to bet my own money, and I've done well.
I will not debate on this subject, because it's always a deadlock. You can not convince me I've not seen what I've seen, and I can not show you what I've seen, and do not expect you to believe it without proof.

Stop Fear Mongering!

I really would like to re-iterate, I do not want you to be afraid. I am going to describe something that might happen that will be scary if it does happen. If it does not, there is no problem. I do not wish you to be fearful before, during or after.

This is like "Stop, Drop and Roll". None of us ever expect to be ablaze. If we are, this is good information. It will be better than running about waving arms and feeding the flames to engulf us. All I want to do here is to give you the "stop, drop and roll" of a market crash. To prevent you panicking and making bad decisions at bad areas. To allow you instead to go, "Fuck! Okay ... well that's not good. Now I have to ..." if scary things do happen.

No One Can Time the Market!

People have predicted and traded every stock market crash in history. The fact that many people try this and get it wrong does not take away from the fact people get this right, then place the right trades and make millions. Not many people make understanding the ways a market moves their life's work. If you do, you get a good feel for it's mood at any given time.

[Fundamental Analysis ] Says That Won't Happen!

I am not here to debate analysis viewpoints. Doing so has little use, it's better to forecast, assess and then take the best actions. I'll confess I am too ignorant on many of these topic to engage in debate. I wake up every day 5 days a week and decide where to bet my money. In doing this, I've found charts forecast and news reports. I can find no way of making money by being told what happened already, so I use the charts.
What I will say is for the warning move I will discuss to happen, something news related will have to change. Some catalyst event will have to happen. In 2008, it was Lehman. Make no mistake, the warnings were on the chart long before the bankruptcy was in the news.

Time in the Markets is Better than Timing the Markets

I am perfectly fine with this perspective, and not here to argue against it. If the market could drop 50% or more and you'd not be concerned because you think it will be back up in 10 years, this is none of my business.
I'm a day trader, so for me personally timing the markets is everything. Spending a lot of time in the market day trading often means you've made a mistake. I'm looking for ways to get foresight into what market moves may develop and understanding of what times and conditions I can enter into these moves to profit from the.
I want to stress I am not necessarily advocating the average person tries to time the markets. In the same way an electrician would not suggest you re-wire your own home. You also could not say to the electrician it's better to leave the lights off than risk getting a shock. Different preparations and skills sets give different possibilities. I spent a lot of years and lost money through a lot of them starting out learning how to do this.
The things I will explain here will not allow a person to consistently time the market. If I may be excused a cheesy pun, this "crash course" will be dealing with only single event, and one single set of scenarios. What I want to put forward for you in this is price moves to watch for and then (really quite specific) levels of price that are likely to offer us the best prices to protect long stock portfolios, or take speculative short trades. Very thin area of assessment.

Forecast and Plan.

What if the S&P500 Went to 2,200 ... Quickly?

It's the weekend, and the last day of August in 2019. The S&P500 has closed 2922 after rallying through the week after some sharp drops from all time highs. We may see record highs again if this keeps up ... but what if next week it opens and starts to fall? Or maybe rallies higher but can not make a new high and starts to fall.
What if it falls faster than it did in the last drop, and what if this time it does not stop? What if it gets to the lows of 2790, and goes from there quickly to 2700. These big levels act as resistance and the market can not trade higher than them. Instead it hits them, reverses and goes down more.

I think people would be nervous, but there'd be still the feeling of this being a normal, albeit tough, corrective move. There's weekly lows of 2,333. Above here the market is still technically up-trending. What if we got there, and the market went through it like it was nothing? What if the coming weeks or months we seen candles bigger than any we've seen recently? What if we were hearing news reports of record falls, rather than record highs?
What if over the development of only weeks and some horrific trading days we went from today's 2922 to break under the 2015 lows of 1,886?
I think people would be afraid!
Nothing I am saying is for the purposes of fear mongering, but I think this is possible. I'd like to say I think it's "highly unlikely", but I am thinking a lot about how to structure real bets on it and I like my odds. If this happens, it's likely the market will go lower still. What you do during the following weeks and months may have a huge affect on your financial health by the start of 2021.

How Does This Scenario Look on a S&P500 Chart?

https://preview.redd.it/ggqyvs2f6xj31.png?width=658&format=png&auto=webp&s=a9d00d758caf655341bd4780a8277b7556546a50

That looks like it's not going to happen, right? I think that this looks like it's not going to happen. We learn through our life experience, and my life experience has taught me when I ignore what I think about things like this and build well structured trade plans that would assume it will happen, money comes. For me, this makes sense to bet on at the moment, as unlikely as it looks. That's getting a bit into "Calling the high", though. \Which this is not about.

This is about what do you do if this happens? What if there is a day when they say on the news that the market just made it's lowest point in the last five years ... and economists and experts say it can go down more!

1 - Filter and assess your sources.
Before you act or even think about the information these sources have (pertaining to what trades to make or expect), check what they were saying now. If they're not saying this could happen - don't worry too much about what they say happens next. They have as much chance of being wrong.

2 - Do not panic.
This is a time to remain calm. Bad things have happened, and there will have been multiple days the market has dropped precipitously. Different economic factors explaining these moves may be threatening to get worse and the market may take more dangerous swings spiking under recent lows. This is the point at which most people will panic and make bad choices with their portfolio.

3 - Buy Around 1,800
This obviously sounds like something anyone would do right now, with price at 2,922; but with the conditions that'd have to be occurring for this of move to happen will make this highly counter intuitive at the time.

4 - Understand Something Changed, New Highs are Not Coming
From peak pessimism around 1,800 I expect the market to start to rally. Rallying strong. Making markets great again.
At this point, you should understand something has changed. The market is not meant to trade at that level in an up-trend. Frequently when these levels 'break', there is a strong counter move that is fierce. It's also brief. We can buy here and offset some of the losses in the mini bounce (but be very cautious).
2,129 area is where the danger of a bear move comes back in. It might rally a bit above here into 2,333.

This is where the second mistake many people will make will be. Not buying the lows, but then starting to buy into this rally thinking it's going to new highs.

Very Important: If price makes moves consistent with what I've described 2,220 - 2,300 are hedge areas.
If you take appropriate actions in these areas you can protect yourself from the chance of excessive loss if the market is to crash in 2020. You can also do this without taking on much risk. Granted if you hedge long portfolios there is some risk of losing a little, but your area of risk on these hedges is less than the area of risk on a long portfolio after this has happened.
When this has happened, historically it's always led to a crash in the coming months/year. We'll have done something the markets do not usually do. Big corrections may look similar, but when you deal with this all the time, you come to know there are specifics that should be noted. If the levels I've mentioned for a buy fill, the market is crashing. It's no longer a question of if.

5 - Hold Hedges Until 1,100

If we crash, the low will probably be only a bit below this level. Anything more than this in a fall would be truly horrific (I know many people think this is horrific, but from a technical point of view this is really to be expected, and not unusual. It only happens after long periods of time, so it's unexpected and uncommon. It not unusual in trend formation).

https://preview.redd.it/puc4slkk6xj31.png?width=662&format=png&auto=webp&s=69e219ba15beddd6bbc944898efa8bce74cd3c85
I am not a financial adviser, and can not tell you any trades you should be making to hedge portfolios or to take speculative positions. I've given these levels on the S&P500, and there are many things correlated to this you could use to protect portfolios. If this happens, I will be very much 'In the trenches'. I'll be trading in various markets every day and sharing some of my insights and trade plans, but I can't tell you specifically what to do.

I am only sharing this with you to let you know there are strategies people have used in the past to predict crashes, and I've used these strategies a lot and become good with them. They now predict a market crash starting in 2019, developing through 2020, and the things I've explained in this post would be the next steps if the prediction is accurate.
If the next steps happen, the strategy would then forecast the S&P500 to go from 2,200 - 2,400 sort of range to 1,000.
I am asking no one to take this seriously at the moment, but I would suggest if the market makes moves similar to what I've described - you then consider there may be a lot of merit to what it further forecasts. Things could look very different from how they do this weekend in a few weekends time.

Good Saturday morning to all of you here on wallstreetbets. I hope everyone on this sub made out pretty nicely in the market this past week, and is ready for the new trading week ahead.
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning September 23rd, 2019.

Week ahead: As stocks struggle to break to new highs, markets could be swayed by Fed speakers, trade - (Source)

Developments in U.S.-Chinese trade talks and the comments from a host of Fed speakers could be important for markets in the week ahead, as stocks struggle to regain highs.
The Fed in the past week cut interest rates for the second time in two months, but the latest forecasts of Fed officials showed just how divided they are on the need for future rate cuts. Five wanted deeper cuts, five didn’t want any cuts and another seven were happy with the Fed’s action.
“The market seems like it’s pretty jumpy based on what the say. i think it would flip back and forth depending on how the headlines come out,” said Tom Simons, money market economist at Jefferies. Simons said the focus will also be on the Fed’s operations in the short-term funding market, after turbulence in the overnight market in the past week temporarily sent some overnight rates sharply higher.
There are nearly a dozen Fed speakers on the calendar in the coming week, but Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is not scheduled to speak.
Trade developments could continue to cause volatility in markets. Reports Friday that Chinese agriculture officials canceled visits to farms in Montana and Nebraska sent stocks lower, for fear it signaled that talks were not making progress.
Stocks in the past week were lower, with the S&P off about 0.5% to 2,992. The index had been around 1% away from its all-time high for a few weeks.
“Tech that has been out of play and is acting faulty. it’s now turning into a headwind, and that could cause a problem for the bulls,” said Scott Redler, partner with T3Live.com. “I haven’t seen so many mixed signals in the market in quite some time.”
“It’s hard for the market to make new highs without tech. At best, it’s concerning when you see key names, like Amazon and Netflix, not just failing to lead but faltering,” he said. Netflix was down more than 8% for the week, and Amazon was off 2.6%.
Redler said it was a concern that shares of market leader Microsoft gave up its initial gains and turned negative, soon after it announced a buyback and raised its dividend. “Strength was sold instead of embraced,” he said. “That was good news. What are they going to do when bad news happens?”
Following the attacks on Saudi Aramco last week, the United Nations General Assembly in New York and meetings around it take on more importance for markets. U.S. and Saudi Arabian officials have said Iran was behind the attack, which knocked a significant amount of Saudi oil production off line. Iran has denied involvement, and Houthi rebels in Yemen have claimed responsibility.
Iran’ President Hassan Rouhani has been given a visa to travel to New York for the UN. Before the attack on Saudi Arabia last week, President Donald Trump had suggested he would speak to Rouhani but there seems little chance of that now. Oil have been highly volatile, with Brent crude futures up 7% since the attack as Saudi Arabia sought to assure markets that it would be able to bring its operations back on line.
There is some economic data that will also be important to markets. There is manufacturing PMI Monday, important after ISM manufacturing data showed a contraction in August. Durable goods will also be important on Friday, as will personal consumption data, which includes the Fed’s preferred inflation indicator, the core PCE deflator.
“What Powell said in his remarks was inflation was below his target,” said Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex. “But even the core PCE deflator is expected to be 1.8, a new high for the year.” The Fed’s target inflation rate is 2%, and other inflation measures have been above that, including core CPI.
The Fed will also be in focus after problems in the overnight funding market, used by banks in need of short term cash. Rates spiked for repo, or repurchase agreements, in a chaotic two-day period Monday and Tuesday. The Fed’s target fed funds rate also moved above its target range, in an unusual move.
The market has since calmed after the Fed carried out open market operations to add liquidity to the market. On Friday, it announced three 14-day operations involving $30 billion as well as continued overnight operations of at least $75 billion each.
“I think the Fed has absolute control over short term rates. It was caught sleeping at the wheel,” said Chandler.
Powell said the Fed would monitor the market and take whatever action is needed. The market is considered the basic plumbing for financial markets, where banks who have a short-term need for cash come to fund themselves. The odd spike in rates was viewed as the result of a cash crunch, not a credit crisis.
Bond market pros have been concerned that the Fed would again see strains in the market at month end, when there’s more activity in the overnight funding market.
“It gets you further past quarter end,” said Jon Hill, rate strategist at BMO. “A 14-day pushes them further into October. I think nerves will have calmed. The fact you’ll see fed funds print clearly in the range will reassert confidence. These operations will serve as a reminder that the Fed can have absolute control the front end if and when it wants to. This is a good thing.”
The funds rate was at 1.90% Thursday, within the target rate range of 1.75% to 2%.
“They’re removing any doubt of their ability to take control of fed funds in the modern framework. They just announced $165 billion over quarter-end , and we may go bigger. They haven’t done a repo injection in 10 years,” said Hill.

This past week saw the following moves in the S&P:

(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL S&P TREE MAP FOR THE PAST WEEK!)

Major Indices for this past week:

(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR INDICES FOR THE PAST WEEK!)

Major Futures Markets as of Friday's close:

(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR FUTURES INDICES AS OF FRIDAY!)

Economic Calendar for the Week Ahead:

(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ECONOMIC CALENDAR FOR THE WEEK AHEAD!)

Sector Performance WTD, MTD, YTD:

(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S PERFORMANCE!)

(CLICK HERE FOR THE WEEK-TO-DATE PERFORMANCE!)

(CLICK HERE FOR THE MONTH-TO-DATE PERFORMANCE!)

(CLICK HERE FOR THE 3-MONTH PERFORMANCE!)

(CLICK HERE FOR THE YEAR-TO-DATE PERFORMANCE!)

(CLICK HERE FOR THE 52-WEEK PERFORMANCE!)

Percentage Changes for the Major Indices, WTD, MTD, QTD, YTD as of Friday's close:

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

S&P Sectors for the Past Week:

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

Major Indices Pullback/Correction Levels as of Friday's close:

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!

Major Indices Rally Levels as of Friday's close:

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for this week:

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

Here are the upcoming IPO's for this week:

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

Friday's Stock Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades:

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #1!)

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #2!)

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #3!)

S&P 500 down 23 of 29 during week after September options expiration, average loss 0.95%

The week after September options expiration week, next week, has a dreadful history of declines especially since 1990. The week after September options expiration week has been a nearly constant source of pain with only a few meaningful exceptions over the past 29 years. Substantial and across the board gains have occurred just three times: 1998, 2001, 2010 and 2016 while many more weeks were hit with sizable losses.
Full stats are in the following sea-of-red table. Average losses since 1990 are even worse; DJIA –1.02%, S&P 500 –0.95%, NASDAQ –0.90% and a sizable –1.38% for Russell 2000. End-of-Q3 portfolio restructuring is the most likely explanation for this trend as managers trim summer losers and position for the fourth quarter.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

October Challenging in Pre-Election Years

October often evokes fear on Wall Street as memories are stirred of crashes in 1929, 1987, the 554-point drop on October 27, 1997, back-to-back massacres in 1978 and 1979, Friday the 13th in 1989 and the 733-point drop on October 15, 2008. During the week ending October 10, 2008, Dow lost 1,874.19 points (18.2%), the worst weekly decline in our database going back to 1901, in point and percentage terms. The term “Octoberphobia” has been used to describe the phenomenon of major market drops occurring during the month. Market calamities can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, so stay on the lookout and don’t get whipsawed if it happens.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Pre-election year Octobers are ranked second from last for DJIA, S&P 500 and NASDAQ while Russell 2000 is dead last with an average loss of 1.9%. Eliminating gruesome 1987 from the calculation provides only a moderate amount of relief. Should a meaningful decline materialize in October it is likely to be an excellent buying opportunity, especially for depressed technology and small-cap shares.

Where’s That September Volatility?

September is historically known as one of the worst for stocks, yet in 2019 the S&P 500 Index is up 2.7% so far amid a sea of scary headlines. Incredibly, the S&P 500 has wavered less than 0.1% from its previous close 6 of the past 10 trading sessions, as it consolidates just beneath all-time highs.
“Over the past two weeks we’ve had the European Central Bank meeting, the Federal Reserve meeting, higher inflation, a historic jump in crude oil, Middle East turmoil, trouble in the repo market, and even multiple NFL quarterbacks sustaining major injuries,” said LPL Financial Senior Market Strategist Ryan Detrick. “Yet, with all of those scary headlines, stocks are actually in the midst of one of the least volatile two-week stretches we’ve seen in years.”
We are quite encouraged by the overall change in market tone we’ve heard recently, with more cyclical names taking the baton and leading, but with the S&P 500 up near our fair value target of 3,000, we would be on the lookout for this sea of tranquility to get rougher at any time. In fact, according to historical calendars, we may need to be on high guard for the second half of September.
As shown in the LPL Chart of the Day, The Second Half of September Can Be Tricky For Stocks, later in the month of September is when we’ve seen seasonal weakness. Things have been going well for equities in the face of some worrisome headlines, but don’t get complacent, as the calendar could be one of the biggest near-term risks.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

The Fed Hits It Down The Middle

“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Mark Twain
As expected, the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) policy committee cut its policy rate by 25 basis points (.25%) to a target range of 1.75%–2%. This comes on the heels of the first rate cut in more than 10 years at the end of July. This cut is somewhat more controversial, however, because the overall U.S. economic data has been improving, and there’s been a tick higher in inflation.
One of the most important questions heading into this meeting was how many voting Fed members would support additional rate cuts. There were two dissenting voting members at the July rate cut, and once again there were two votes opposed to today’s cut—but unlike last time, there was also one dissenter who favored a larger 50 basis point (.50%) cut. Materials in the economic projections indicated 10 of 17 participants (which includes non-voting members) did not believe additional cuts would be needed over the remainder of the year, although evolving economic conditions could certainly lead to a shift.
As the quote from Mark Twain suggests, by looking back at history we can potentially find clues as to what might happen in the future.
Looking back at the previous two recessions (2001 and 2008), the Fed cut rates 50 basis points (.50%) to kick off the new cycle of rate cuts. We looked back at what the Fed said at the time, and policymakers didn’t foresee a recession; the larger .50% cut might have been their way of showing how worried they really were at the time. In other words, maybe the Fed knew there potentially was trouble under the surface.
Compare this with three consecutive 25 basis point (.25%) cuts in the 1995/1996 and 1998 rate cut cycles, which led to continued equity gains and avoided recessions. Given we foresee one more cut this year, could it be another three cuts of 25 basis points (.25%) and then an economic acceleration?
“Here’s the catch. When the first two cuts in a new cycle of rate cuts are only 25 basis points, this could be the Fed’s way of truly viewing the cuts as insurance,” explained LPL Financial Senior Market Strategist Ryan Detrick. “In fact, the past five cycles of cuts that started with two 25 basis point cuts saw the S&P 500 Index move higher 6 and 12 months later every single time.”
As shown in the LPL Chart of the Day, Stocks Have Historically Done Well If The First Two Fed Rate Cuts Are 25 Basis Points, the S&P 500 was up an average of 9.7% six months after the second of two 25 basis point cuts to kick off a new cycle of rate cuts. Going out a year, the S&P 500 had gained a very impressive average of 16.7%.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

Strong Start for September, but Second Half Could Bring Trouble

As of Friday’s close the market is well above historical average performance in September. DJIA was up nearly 3.1%, S&P 500 was up 2.8%, NASDAQ and Russell 1000 were up 2.7% while Russell 2000 was up 5.6%. Small-caps outperforming large-caps recently is not unusual and they did so again today. However, the second half of September has historically been weaker than the first half. The week after options expiration week can be treacherous with S&P 500 logging 23 weekly losses in 29 years since 1990. End-of-quarter portfolio restructuring, and window dressing can amplify the impacts of any negative headlines.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

Broader Transports Still Outperforming YTD

With shares of FedEx (FDX) on pace for their second worst earnings reaction day since at least 2001, the Dow Transports, an index in which FDX has a weighting of over 8% (after today's decline), is down close to 2%. Historically, the Transports have been considered a leading indicator of the economy, so the weakness in FDX, and by extension, the Dow Transports, is resulting in heightened concerns over the state of the economy. Looking at the chart below, the picture for the Transports doesn't look pretty. The timing of today's decline couldn't have been worse as it came just as the Transports were attempting to break above the highs from July, but now it just looks like the second lower high this year. Following today's declines, the Dow Transports are up 14.7% YTD which is about five percentage points behind the performance of the S&P 500.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Given the changes in the US economy over time, we've been skeptical of the continued predictive ability of the Transports, but even putting that aside for a moment, a broader look at Transports shows a less pessimistic picture. The chart below shows the performance of the stocks in the S&P 1500 index on an equal-weighted basis so far in 2019. By this measure, today's decline comes after the index made a higher high, and while it's back below those former highs today, with a gain of 20.5% YTD, this broader look at transports is still outperforming the S&P 500 on a YTD basis. It may not be a great picture for this group of transport stocks, but it doesn't really look bad either.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

STOCK MARKET VIDEO: Stock Market Analysis Video for Week Ending September 20th, 2019

(CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!)

STOCK MARKET VIDEO: ShadowTrader Video Weekly 09.22.19

(CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!)

Here are the most notable companies (tickers) reporting earnings in this upcoming trading week ahead-

$MU

$NIO

$AZO

$KMX

$NKE

$BB

$RAD

$CMD

$ACN

$UXIN

$JBL

$INFO

$CAG

$DAVA

$MANU

$SNX

$FDS

$KBH

$UEPS

$ATU

$CTAS

$MTN

$AGTC

$WOR

$PIR

$ISR

$DLNG

$CAMP

$AIR

$FUL

$PRGS

$CMTL

$DYNT

$RBZ

(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S MOST NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!)

(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S HIGHEST VOLATILITY EARNINGS RELEASES!)

(CLICK HERE FOR MOST ANTICIPATED EARNINGS RELEASES FOR THE NEXT 5 WEEKS!)

Below are some of the notable companies coming out with earnings releases this upcoming trading week ahead which includes the date/time of release & consensus estimates courtesy of Earnings Whispers:

Monday 9.23.19 Before Market Open:

(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)

Monday 9.23.19 After Market Close:

([CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!]())
NONE.

Tuesday 9.24.19 Before Market Open:

(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)

Tuesday 9.24.19 After Market Close:

(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)

Wednesday 9.25.19 Before Market Open:

(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)

Wednesday 9.25.19 After Market Close:

(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)

Thursday 9.26.19 Before Market Open:

(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)

Thursday 9.26.19 After Market Close:

(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)

Friday 9.27.19 Before Market Open:

([CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!]())
NONE.

Friday 9.27.19 After Market Close:

([CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!]())
NONE.

Micron Technology, Inc. $49.16

Micron Technology, Inc. (MU) is confirmed to report earnings at approximately 4:05 PM ET on Thursday, September 26, 2019. The consensus earnings estimate is $0.43 per share on revenue of $4.51 billion and the Earnings Whisper ® number is $0.49 per share. Investor sentiment going into the company's earnings release has 67% expecting an earnings beat The company's guidance was for earnings of $0.38 to $0.52 per share. Consensus estimates are for earnings to decline year-over-year by 87.92% with revenue decreasing by 46.56%. Short interest has decreased by 21.7% since the company's last earnings release while the stock has drifted higher by 37.1% from its open following the earnings release to be 23.2% above its 200 day moving average of $39.90. Overall earnings estimates have been revised lower since the company's last earnings release. On Friday, September 20, 2019 there was some notable buying of 12,865 contracts of the $50.00 put expiring on Friday, September 27, 2019. Option traders are pricing in a 7.5% move on earnings and the stock has averaged a 7.1% move in recent quarters.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

NIO Inc. $3.04

NIO Inc. (NIO) is confirmed to report earnings at approximately 4:30 AM ET on Tuesday, September 24, 2019. Investor sentiment going into the company's earnings release has 51% expecting an earnings beat The company's guidance was for revenue of $169.00 million to $193.00 million. Short interest has increased by 25.8% since the company's last earnings release while the stock has drifted lower by 26.2% from its open following the earnings release to be 39.6% below its 200 day moving average of $5.03. On Wednesday, September 4, 2019 there was some notable buying of 40,590 contracts of the $1.50 put expiring on Friday, November 15, 2019. Option traders are pricing in a 17.1% move on earnings and the stock has averaged a 9.7% move in recent quarters.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

AutoZone, Inc. -

AutoZone, Inc. (AZO) is confirmed to report earnings at approximately 7:00 AM ET on Tuesday, September 24, 2019. The consensus earnings estimate is $21.64 per share on revenue of $3.94 billion and the Earnings Whisper ® number is $21.98 per share. Investor sentiment going into the company's earnings release has 62% expecting an earnings beat. Consensus estimates are for year-over-year earnings growth of 16.72% with revenue increasing by 10.71%. Short interest has increased by 23.5% since the company's last earnings release while the stock has drifted higher by 15.1% from its open following the earnings release to be 15.6% above its 200 day moving average of $1,003.22. Overall earnings estimates have been revised higher since the company's last earnings release. Option traders are pricing in a 5.8% move on earnings and the stock has averaged a 6.7% move in recent quarters.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

CarMax, Inc. $84.63

CarMax, Inc. (KMX) is confirmed to report earnings at approximately 7:35 AM ET on Tuesday, September 24, 2019. The consensus earnings estimate is $1.33 per share on revenue of $5.03 billion and the Earnings Whisper ® number is $1.38 per share. Investor sentiment going into the company's earnings release has 63% expecting an earnings beat. Consensus estimates are for year-over-year earnings growth of 7.26% with revenue increasing by 5.54%. Short interest has increased by 0.7% since the company's last earnings release while the stock has drifted lower by 3.6% from its open following the earnings release to be 14.9% above its 200 day moving average of $73.63. Overall earnings estimates have been revised higher since the company's last earnings release. On Friday, September 6, 2019 there was some notable buying of 1,023 contracts of the $92.50 call expiring on Friday, October 18, 2019. Option traders are pricing in a 7.2% move on earnings and the stock has averaged a 6.0% move in recent quarters.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

Nike Inc $86.68

Nike Inc (NKE) is confirmed to report earnings at approximately 4:15 PM ET on Tuesday, September 24, 2019. The consensus earnings estimate is $0.71 per share on revenue of $10.45 billion and the Earnings Whisper ® number is $0.76 per share. Investor sentiment going into the company's earnings release has 65% expecting an earnings beat. Consensus estimates are for year-over-year earnings growth of 5.97% with revenue increasing by 5.05%. Short interest has increased by 0.4% since the company's last earnings release while the stock has drifted higher by 3.2% from its open following the earnings release to be 5.1% above its 200 day moving average of $82.50. Overall earnings estimates have been revised lower since the company's last earnings release. On Monday, September 16, 2019 there was some notable buying of 4,646 contracts of the $84.00 call expiring on Friday, September 27, 2019. Option traders are pricing in a 5.2% move on earnings and the stock has averaged a 4.5% move in recent quarters.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

BlackBerry Limited $7.54

BlackBerry Limited (BB) is confirmed to report earnings at approximately 7:00 AM ET on Tuesday, September 24, 2019. The consensus estimate is for a loss of $0.01 per share and the Earnings Whisper ® number is $0.01 per share. Investor sentiment going into the company's earnings release has 32% expecting an earnings beat. Consensus estimates are for earnings to decline year-over-year by 150.00% with revenue increasing by 375.71%. Short interest has increased by 1.0% since the company's last earnings release while the stock has drifted lower by 9.2% from its open following the earnings release to be 6.9% below its 200 day moving average of $8.10. Overall earnings estimates have been revised higher since the company's last earnings release. On Tuesday, September 17, 2019 there was some notable buying of 2,012 contracts of the $8.00 call expiring on Friday, September 27, 2019. Option traders are pricing in a 9.9% move on earnings and the stock has averaged a 7.9% move in recent quarters.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

Rite Aid Corp. $7.40

Rite Aid Corp. (RAD) is confirmed to report earnings at approximately 7:00 AM ET on Thursday, September 26, 2019. The consensus earnings estimate is $0.08 per share on revenue of $5.42 billion and the Earnings Whisper ® number is $0.10 per share. Investor sentiment going into the company's earnings release has 50% expecting an earnings beat. Consensus estimates are for year-over-year earnings growth of 900.00% with revenue decreasing by 0.03%. Short interest has increased by 22.2% since the company's last earnings release while the stock has drifted higher by 5.1% from its open following the earnings release to be 36.4% below its 200 day moving average of $11.64. On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 there was some notable buying of 580 contracts of the $7.00 call expiring on Friday, October 18, 2019. Option traders are pricing in a 20.7% move on earnings and the stock has averaged a 20.5% move in recent quarters.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

Cantel Medical Corp. $85.02

Cantel Medical Corp. (CMD) is confirmed to report earnings at approximately 8:00 AM ET on Monday, September 23, 2019. The consensus earnings estimate is $0.61 per share on revenue of $238.60 million and the Earnings Whisper ® number is $0.61 per share. Investor sentiment going into the company's earnings release has 55% expecting an earnings beat. Consensus estimates are for earnings to decline year-over-year by 1.61% with revenue increasing by 4.26%. Short interest has increased by 47.7% since the company's last earnings release while the stock has drifted higher by 27.5% from its open following the earnings release to be 10.7% above its 200 day moving average of $76.78. Overall earnings estimates have been revised lower since the company's last earnings release. On Friday, September 20, 2019 there was some notable buying of 571 contracts of the $90.00 call expiring on Friday, October 18, 2019. Option traders are pricing in a 7.0% move on earnings and the stock has averaged a 6.9% move in recent quarters.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

Accenture Ltd. $193.09

Accenture Ltd. (ACN) is confirmed to report earnings at approximately 6:50 AM ET on Thursday, September 26, 2019. The consensus earnings estimate is $1.71 per share on revenue of $11.08 billion and the Earnings Whisper ® number is $1.74 per share. Investor sentiment going into the company's earnings release has 67% expecting an earnings beat. Consensus estimates are for year-over-year earnings growth of 8.23% with revenue increasing by 4.11%. Short interest has increased by 23.3% since the company's last earnings release while the stock has drifted higher by 8.0% from its open following the earnings release to be 11.3% above its 200 day moving average of $173.47. Overall earnings estimates have been unchanged since the company's last earnings release. On Friday, September 13, 2019 there was some notable buying of 1,279 contracts of the $115.00 put expiring on Friday, November 15, 2019. Option traders are pricing in a 4.5% move on earnings and the stock has averaged a 4.2% move in recent quarters.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

Uxin Limited $3.26

Uxin Limited (UXIN) is confirmed to report earnings before the market opens on Monday, September 23, 2019. The consensus estimate is for a loss of $0.09 per share. Investor sentiment going into the company's earnings release has 66% expecting an earnings beat The company's guidance was for revenue of $130.00 million to $137.00 million. Consensus estimates are for earnings to decline year-over-year by 200.00% with revenue increasing by 892.95%. The stock has drifted higher by 44.9% from its open following the earnings release to be 4.5% below its 200 day moving average of $3.41. Overall earnings estimates have been revised lower since the company's last earnings release. On Friday, September 20, 2019 there was some notable buying of 509 contracts of the $4.00 call expiring on Friday, October 18, 2019. Option traders are pricing in a 24.5% move on earnings and the stock has averaged a 10.5% move in recent quarters.

(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)

DISCUSS!

What are you all watching for in this upcoming trading week?
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a great trading week ahead wallstreetbets.

See first: https://www.reddit.com/Forex/comments/clx0v9/profiting_in_trends_planning_for_the_impulsive/

Against it's major counterparts, the JPY has been showing a lot of strength. It's now getting into areas where it is threatening breakouts of decade long support and resistance levels.

Opportunity for us as traders if this happens is abundant. We've not seen trading conditions like this for over 10 years on this currency, and back then it was a hell of a show! In this post I'll discuss this, and my plans to trade it.

I'm going to focus on one currency pair, although I do think this same sort of move will be reflected across most of the XXXJPY pairs. The pair I will be using is GBPJPY. I like the volatility in this pair, and along with the JPY looking continually strong and there being uncertainty in the GBP with possible Brexit related issues, this seems like an ideal target for planning to trade a strong move up in the JPY.

The Big Overview

I'll start by drawing your attention to something a lot of you will have probably not been aware of. GBPJPY has always been in a downtrend. All this stuff happening day to day, week to week and month to month has always fitted into an overall larger downtrend. In the context of that downtrend, there have been no surprises in the price moves GBPJPY has made. This is not true of the real world events that drove these moves. Things like market crashes, bubbles and Brexit.

https://preview.redd.it/5gfhwxcy6wj31.png?width=663&format=png&auto=webp&s=4d4806dee84a7bbe073e08d153da946222893eeb

Source: https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/bank-of-england-spot/historical-spot-exchange-rates/gbp/GBP-to-JPY

I know this has been largely sideways for a long time, but it is valid to say this is a downtrend. The highs are getting lower, and the lows have been getting lower (last low after the Brexit fall and following 'flash crash' some weeks later).
This is important to understand, because it's going to help a lot when we look at what has happened over the last 5 - 10 years in this pair, and what it tells us might be about to happen in the coming few months and year to come. If the same pattern continues, a well designed and executed trade plan can make life changing money for the person who does that. I hope those of you who take the time to check the things I say here understand that is very feasible.

The last Decade

In the same way I've shown you how we can understand when a trend has corrective weeks and see certain sorts of price structure in that, from 2012 to 2015 GBPJPY had a corrective half decade. In the context of large price moves over decades, this was a sharp correction. I've discussed at length in my posts how sharp corrections can then lead into impulse legs.

https://preview.redd.it/kvnrqau07wj31.png?width=675&format=png&auto=webp&s=8e96f02a189a811d511ef7946037fd670d106b1b
I've explained though my posts and real time analysis and trades in the short term how in an impulse leg we would expect to see a strong move in line with the trend, then it stalling for a while. Choppy range. Then there being a big spike out move of that range. Making dramatic new lows. Then we'd enter into another corrective cycle (I've been showing you weeks, it's more practical. We'll be looking at the same thing scaled out over longer, that's all).

At this point, we can say the following things which are all non-subjective.

GBPJPY has always been in a downtrend.
A clear high after a strong rally was made in 2016
Since then, GBPJPY has downtrended

5 year chart confirms the latter two points.

https://preview.redd.it/a44rzzs47wj31.png?width=686&format=png&auto=webp&s=43fbebe933fa80d1c24a1f8fde2c08653d125d18

These are interesting facts. We can do a lot of with this information to understand where we may really be in the overall context of what this pair is doing.

The Clear Trend Cycle of the Last 5 Years

If we were to use the Elliot Wave theory, based on the above data we have we'd expect to see down trending formations on the weekly chart over the last 5 years. These would form is three distinct trend legs, each having a corrective pattern after. We would expect to see after that a strong correction (corrective year in down trending 5 year cycle), it stop at the 61.8% fib and then resume a down trend. The down trend would form similarly in three main moves.

https://preview.redd.it/ghvgzr577wj31.png?width=663&format=png&auto=webp&s=caeedc4f48ab3b4d1ed921ef519a33200db62868

Whether or not you believe Elliot Wave theory is any good or not, this is what it would predict. If you gave someone who knew about Elliot trading the facts we've established - they'd make this prediction. So let's see how that would look on the GBPJPY chart. I'm having problems with my cTrader platform today, so will have to use MT4 charting.

These are three distinct swings from a high to a low. It also fits all the other Elliot rules about swing formation (which I won't cover, but you can Google and learn if you'd like to). We then go into a period of correction. GBPJPY rallies for a year.
This corrective year does not look very different from a corrective week. Which I've shown how we can understand and trade though various different posts.

https://preview.redd.it/m9ga8pp97wj31.png?width=590&format=png&auto=webp&s=6ed069207b8297c0ab67d6608206b57a1b354fef
Source: https://www.reddit.com/Forex/comments/cwwe34/common_trading_mistakes_how_trend_strategies_lose/

Compare the charts, there is nothing different. It's not because I've copied this chart, it is just what a trend and correction looks like. I've shown this is not curve fitting by forecasting these corrective weeks and telling you all my trades in them (very high success rate).

What about the retrace level?
When we draw fibs from the shoulders high (which is where the resistance was, there was a false breakout of it giving an ever so slightly higher high), it's uncanny how price reacted to this level.

https://preview.redd.it/68pa0bgc7wj31.png?width=667&format=png&auto=webp&s=8f78ce2c11f267f32dacd17c8717dcfa1f8bcb6a
This is exactly what the theory would predict. I hope even those sceptical about Elliot theory can agree this looks like three trend moves with corrections, a big correction and then a top at 61.8%. Which is everything the starting data would predict if the theory was valid and in action.

Assumptions and Planning

To this point, I've made no assumptions. This is a reporting/highlighting of facts on historical data of this pair. Now I am going to make some assumptions to use them to prepare a trade plan. These will be;

This is an Elliot formation, and will continue to be.
Since it is, this leg will have symmetry to the previous leg.

I'll use the latter to confirm the former. I'll use a projection of what it'd look like if it was similar to the previous move. I'll put in my markers, and look for things to confirm or deny it. There'll be ways to both suggest I am right, and suggest I am wrong. For as long as nothing that obviously invalidates these assumptions happens in the future price action, I'll continue to assume them to be accurate.

Charting Up for Forecasts

The first thing I have do here is get some markers. What I want to do is see if there is a consistency in price interactions on certain fib levels (this is using different methods from what I've previously discussed in my posts, to avoid confusion for those who follow my stuff). I am going to draw extension swings and these will give level forecasts. I have strategies based upon this, and I'm looking for action to be consistent with these, and also duplicated in the big swings down.
I need to be very careful with how I draw my fibs. Since I can see what happened in the chart, it obviously gives me some bias to curve fit to that. This does not suit my objective. Making it fit will not help give foresight. So I need to look for ways to draw the fib on the exact same part of the swing in both of the moves.

https://preview.redd.it/d5qwm8vg7wj31.png?width=662&format=png&auto=webp&s=ad2deba557f9f6d8a0fe06d34cbe3307e7cccc24

These two parts of price moves look like very similar expressions of each other to me. There is the consolidation at the low, and then a big breakout. Looking closer at the top, both of them make false breakouts low before making a top. So I am going to use these swings to draw my fibs on, from the low to the high. What I will be looking for as specific markers is the price reaction to the 1.61% level (highly important fib).
A strategy I have designed around this would look for price to stall at this level, bounce a bit and then make a big breakout and strong trend. This would continue into the 2.20 and 2.61 extension levels. So I'm interested to see if that matches in.

https://preview.redd.it/mpoqz4aj7wj31.png?width=663&format=png&auto=webp&s=710d72120085c1e137c800f57a36f910f78eebcb
Very similar price moves are seen in the area where price traded through the 1.61 level. The breakout strategy here predicts a retracement and then another sell to new lows.
On the left swing, we made a retracement and now test lows. On the right swing, we've got to the point of testing the lows here. This is making this level very important. The breakout strategy here would predict a swing to 61 is price breaks these lows. This might sound unlikely, but this signal would have been flagged as possible back in 2008. It would require the certain criteria I've explained here, and all of this has appeared on the chart since then. This gives me many reasons to suspect a big sell is coming.

On to the next assumption. For this fall to happen in a strong style like all of these are suggesting, it'd have to be one hell of a move. Elliot wave theory would predict this, if it was wave 3 move, these are the strongest. From these I'm going to form a hypothesis and then see if I can find evidence for or against it. I am going to take the hypothesis that where we are in this current GBPJPY chart is going to late come to been seen in a larger context as this.

https://preview.redd.it/tkfzja5n7wj31.png?width=661&format=png&auto=webp&s=47fc014619a61728f16e1527e729b82edad6b94e

This hypothesis would have the Brexit lows and correction from this being the same as the small bounce up before this market capitulated. This would forecast there being a break in this pair to the downside, and that then being followed by multiple sustained strong falls. I know this looks insanely big ... but this is not much in the context of the theme of the last 50 years. This sort of thing has always been what happened when we made this breakout.

Since I have my breakout strategy forecasting 61, I check for confluence of anything that may also give that area as a forecast. I'm looking for symmetry, so I take the ratio of the size of the first big fall on the left to the ratio of when it all out crashed. These legs are close to 50% more (bit more, this is easy math). The low to high of the recent swing would be 7,500 pips. So this would forecast 11,000.
When you take that away from the high of 156, it comes in very close to 61. Certainly close enough to be considered within the margin of error this strategy has for forecasting.

I will be posting a lot more detailed trade plans that this. Dealing specific levels to plan to engage the market, stop trailing and taking profit. I'll also quite actively track my trades I am making to enter into the market for this move. This post is to get the broad strokes of why I'm looking for this trade in place, and to help you to have proper context by what I mean when you hear me talking about big sells on this pair and other XXXJPY pairs.

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This past week saw the following moves in the S&P:

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Friday's Stock Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades:

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S&P 500 down 23 of 29 during week after September options expiration, average loss 0.95%

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October Challenging in Pre-Election Years

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The Fed Hits It Down The Middle

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Broader Transports Still Outperforming YTD

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STOCK MARKET VIDEO: Stock Market Analysis Video for Week Ending September 20th, 2019

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